All this talk of Rules and Regs (Governance Part 1, Part 2) sure makes the Sunday Assembly sound dull. Well, my bored friend, now seems a good time to talk about the advantages of joining Team Sunday Assembly. The benefits are many, myriad and manifold (free thesauruses!). They are great in the near term and will only get better as we get bigger.

The near-term advantage is that the Sunday Assembly has got momentum like homeopathy’s got no proven health benefits. We started with one in London in January, in June Melbourne, New York and Bristol had Assemblies, Brighton starts in September and by December there could be 40 (give or take). Baby, this train is moving, so hop on board and grab a sandwich.

What we deliver: a name that people trust, super branding that is world class (to be released v. soon), a tried and tested format that you can use, and, with the 40 Dates and 40 Nights: The Roadshow, we have a tool that will help you launch your Assembly with maximum effect.

  1. The Brand: is very useful as it is a lot easier to say to your friends “Check out these links, The Sunday Assembly looks great. Do you want to start one? “, than “I want to start an atheist church. You in?". I spent a year saying the latter and people generally aren't interested.
  2. The Branding: I love the design we have at the moment, and the look of the logo, (thanks Sarah at Labfervour!) but we are working with a totally aces creative director who is going to give us some branding that steps it up a notch. Be excited.
  3. The Format: a tried and tested format will help you greatly. It’s been used in New York, Melbourne and Bristol, and is being improved all the time.
  4. 40 Dates and 40 Nights: the aim of this tour is to create a worldwide blizzard of publicity that is appropriate to 40 godless congregations being launched in two months. We hope local Assemblies will be able to launch large with congregations between 100-300 strong.

Launching large gives your congregation massive advantages (check out the Association of Related Churches to find out why (also, read Rick Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Church – it is amazing), but it will be good for The Sunday Assembly to be large. A powerful central body can provide local Assemblies with tools and services that an individual congregation could not provide themselves. Together, we will be greater than the sum of our parts. Together, we can be a team.

Two key areas that will be super useful include powerful marketing and a top-notch website. Let’s start with the marketing. Check out this video from Hillsong church:

This is better than almost every single humanist and atheist video I've ever seen. Evangelical churches, such as Hillsong, really commit to create fantastic videos to get the word out about their congregations, and to spread their message. The Sunday Assembly can provide that for your local community.

This year The Sunday Assembly has been able to spread virally, while having a website that looks like it has been attacked by a virus. My own background is in web start ups (sort of), and the money we raise will be used to create a website that allows local Assemblies to connect with local folk who want to celebrate life (Lifers? Lifeists? Lifearians?), to organize their congregations and to publicise their events. The devil might have the best tunes, but The Sunday Assembly will have the best digital tools!

Join The Sunday Assembly and be part of a congregation of congregations, a team of teams, a family of families, global community that is dedicated to helping each other thrive, succeed and prosper (did I mention the free thesauruses?).