The Stairway To Google Heaven
This is Abbot Christopher Jamison from Worth Abbey, a monastery deep in the Sussex countryside. Author of the very popular book - Finding Sanctuary - he’s actually my old headmaster as I went to the school the monks run down there, but he’s now moved on to a loftier role, and is a bit of a celebrity here in the UK, having let cameras in for 40 days and nights to film a kind of reality TV show a couple of years back.
The Monastery saw a group of guys from different backgrounds enter the monks’ inner sanctum and live like them with some stunning results.
At the time Christopher had asked me to promote their website while the show was on TV, so I set him up with a Google Adwords account. He was especially keen to appear on keywords to do with vocation discernment for which they run spiritual retreats as well as a special course called Compass. All these quickly became oversubscribed.
A few weeks back he called me up and said they’d hit the jackpot! Not sure what he meant as I’m pretty sure Do Not Gamble is the 11th commandment, but he went on to explain that because of our search campaign, a guy had come along to one of the retreats, found some kind of “calling” and was now going to become a monk!!!
He even wrote down a testimonial which went something like this:
And so I began to feel that God might be
calling me to the priesthood.
I felt I really needed to talk to someone,
but I had no idea who to turn to.
Well, I turned to Google. I think I typed in something
like ‘retreat’ and ‘religious vocation’.
Top of the list was “The Monastery” website.
If it hadn’t been for THE INTERNET…
I would probably still be a software engineer!
So what is Microsoft or Google’s loss is God’s gain……
Just goes to show that it’s not all about cheap loans, holidays and digital cameras. People are actually using search engines to find a completely different way of life.
Dec12
23 Comments
I am inspired-get thee to a nunnery!
Hmmm, let’s do an ROI calculation on that
“cost per monk”
[...] friend Mel Carson pinged me today with this story, a guy who became a monk in a pretty incredible way, go read it, it’s [...]
That’s so funny! excellent story!
How fascinating.
And the last line reads like a punchline… a software engineer! Can’t wait to see what he develops for the monastery.
Just goes to show you that when you show the right ad, at the right time, to the right person–you can change lives.
cost per monk, haha!
This has been my point all along you can “sell” anything on the Internet, even Monk-hoods. Great stuff, but even so it is still a seccond runner up for the Joe C. Video. Man!! that was huge.
Nice story.
However, how many men of faith go against the will of God by checking out porn on the Internet?
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How can someone really state what the will of God is! If you knew what the will of god was then you would know that she isn’t interested in your opinions on porn!
Well, that does it, then. All those folks who’ve been crazily suggesting that Google is God were now clearly proven wrong. We’re just God’s assistant
(Oh, Lord, let me not be quoted out of context here!)
Seriously, though, thanks for sharing. That’s a fun story
[...] Stairway to Google Heaven - Mel Carson from Microsoft was inspired by the Fishkins Rand and Gillian to write this blog post ode to what search marketing can do for good causes. [...]
[...] friend Mel Carson pinged me today with this story, a guy who became a monk in a pretty incredible way, go read it, it’s [...]
[...] The Stairway To Google Heaven I visit Worth Abbey for retreats occasionally and I think this is a brilliant. Google brought in a new monk to the fold. The power of advertising my friends, it can change lives! (tags: 2.0 advertising Christian Christianity, community bbc google adwords religion tech technology) [...]
[...] The Stairway To Google Heaven This is so great - Worth Abbey have generated their first vocation through the internet. I have been visit ing Worth for retreats (when they have space!) for a number of years, and I am very excited that the web is proving sucessful for them in such a dir (tags: vocation Christian google internet online Worth Abbey monks) [...]
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