This article about effectively
marketing the church was forwarded to me by a reader along with a two-word review: “fantastically
misguided”.
“Misguided” is a good
way to put it. I think Cameron and Tara from Christ & Pop Culture are well-intentioned. They contend
that Jesus must be the focus of all attempts to promote
a church and that “church marketing strategies applied without guidance from
Scripture undermine the kingdom of God by causing Christians to alter their
identities”.
So with Christ as the focus and scripture
for guidance, what could go wrong? Lots, it seems.
What Are Churches Selling Anyway?
One unfortunate feature of the article is that it’s all about how to sell something that the writers never bother to clearly define. In fact, they deliberately avoid doing so:
“Church marketing is mostly about promoting and creating awareness. We won’t go into the details here of what churches ‘sell.’ ”
Too bad. A study of how the Lord and his
apostles “marketed” the gospel might have been instructive.
To Cameron and Tara, the importance of
finding, maintaining and marketing your peculiar “church identity” is
paramount. This is more than a little wrongheaded. In fact, the versions of Jesus
Christ being presented and the panoply of emphases already being promoted by churches
and denominations today are so vastly different from one other as to be unrecognizable
in many cases as the same “product” at all.
Consider, for instance, the lavishly
packaged ‘prosperity gospel’ promoted in some megachurches, and set it
alongside the minimalism and austerity of Sunday morning in a Gospel Hall. The
same God is (allegedly) worshiped in each case, but the features of his
character to which his disciples call attention and the sort of lifestyle one
may expect from following him are near-polar opposites.
“Identity” and the Gospel
I would argue that to promote denominational distinctives, scriptural hobby horses or lifestyle tics as our church “identity” is to miss
the point of preaching the gospel entirely. I would also argue that churches
and denominations are not in the least danger of losing sight of such “identities”
(in the rather secular sense the word is being used here), though it might be better in some cases if they did. Rather, they are in
imminent danger of losing sight of their core message, which ought to be exactly
the same message regardless of the individual Christian or church group that
happens to be sharing it.
Good marketers know it is impossible to
consider methods of promotion independently of the product being promoted. Thus
the inability of a marketer to distinguish product from packaging may be
considered a big problem.
Here’s another:
Here’s another:
Who’s the Market?
Cameron and Tara assume
the church’s “target market” is the community that lives around the church building:
“It’s essential for the church to respond to its congregation’s needs. Indeed, the gospel is for everyone, but your church’s niche is what sets it apart in the community. For example, if your church is in a low-income neighborhood, your main niche should be related to the needs of the people in that community.”
Now of course if most of your congregation
live within walking distance of your church building, there may be some basis
to assume the surrounding neighbourhood is your primary target for evangelism.
But is this actually the case? It’s a
question that is never asked.
The Commuting Church
The idea that the people who worship in any
particular building are primarily local residents is a holdover from Little House on the Prairie, where the
whole town walked or buggied down the road to the combination
church/schoolhouse. It just ain’t so anymore in the Western world. Transit
infrastructure, the ubiquity of vehicle ownership among the middle class and
the increasing tendency of young couples to abandon their inner-city apartments
and condos for more affordable housing in the ’burbs the moment their first
child is on the way all make the “community church” a much less likely
proposition.
In my entire life I’ve never been to a church where the majority of Christians who attended lived close enough to walk to services when they felt like it. Not a single one.
But that’s me. I’ve had little luck in
finding accurate statistics on just how many Christians commute to church these
days, but a quick Google search shows many of us are at least asking the
question. David Trauffer says the average is a 15 minute drive. As an inner-city churchgoer, I’d estimate sixty or seventy percent of our
congregation drive or transit at least that far, and many drive half an hour or more.
Does it make any sense for Christians to
consider as their primary target for the gospel an area of town in which they
do not make their home and in which they only appear once or twice a week
for the purpose of worship?
Not really.
Corporate Evangelism and Church Growth
Further, there’s a second largely false assumption
embedded in the first one, and that is that a church’s corporate witness is the
primary means by which the church grows. Again, I find this to be untrue, and I’m
far from a lone voice on that front.
Cameron and Tara talk about ‘Beach Baptism
Blasts’ and other somewhat-flaky public events as standard church practice
these days. In Canada, some churches do Saturday afternoon community barbecues
in the parking lot, themed dinners with a well-known Christian speaker,
concerts and so on. Then there’s the traditional gospel meetings and “Family Bible
Hours” many churches promote.
Special events generally cost money, and
some quite a bit of it. It’s reasonable to inquire whether they actually work.
So what’s the return on such efforts? It’s
hard to say. They are certainly visible, they create awareness and they
mobilize Christians and make possible contacts that might not happen any other
way. I’d be reluctant to say they should be entirely abandoned. But such
corporate events are not patterned on the book of Acts nor do we find
directions in the epistles to engage in the them. In practice, rarely do they
produce any significant, measurable long-term effect.
Who’s Actually Getting Saved?
What does? The Adventists tell us the two most significant factors that influence people to join their church are (1) being
brought up in an Adventist home, and (2) a friend or relative (at 59% and 58% respectively, far eclipsing
public evangelism meetings at 36%).
They’re not alone. A Pentecostal church in
Indiana cites a survey of 8,000 American churchgoers that produced the following results when they were asked, “How did you come
into the church?”
“6-8% — said the minister was the reason. His personality or reputation brought them to that church.That last bit is critical. If these numbers have any basis in reality (and in the churches I know well, this is very much the case), church growth is primarily a result of sharing a message over time through established relationships: family relationships, relationships with neighbours, friends and people at work.
4-6% — were walk-ins. One day they decided they needed to go to church, so they did.
2-4% — said they were attracted by the church’s outstanding program and facilities.
1-2% — said it was because someone visited them or knocked on their door.
0.1% — said that it was through a radio or T.V. program that they had been reached.
However, 70-90% replied that their conversion was the result of the witness from a family member, friend, or work associate.”
The New Testament Pattern
This is a pattern we find in the New
Testament, isn’t it? The sharing of good news is primarily an individual rather
than a corporate responsibility. It is the word of the individual that is emphasized
and that was ultimately most effective.
When Jesus healed someone, it was the neighbours who noticed first. The Samaritan woman’s testimony about Jesus to those in her hometown
was effective because the townspeople knew who she was. In Acts, people got
saved and their first testimony was to their immediate households. Paul’s pattern when he traveled was to go first to the synagogues, where the
Judaism in which he had been raised gave him an automatic “in” and a hearing
for the gospel. He traded on the existing relationship of a common religious
background.
For the most part, the spread of the gospel
in scripture hinged on one person with something important to share going first
to his family, friends and neighbours, and then often out into more hostile
territory with the very same truth. The church grew because its members took
the gospel seriously as individuals, and made it a real and living part of
their daily experience.
If we expect our churches to grow without
doing the same sorts of things, I think we will find ourselves greatly
disappointed in the results. Holding public events and promoting them on social
media is certainly one possible way to share the gospel, but it is far from the
most effective one.
Hitting the Target
Back to the “target market” for a moment.
There’s nothing wrong with caring for the community in which one has built a church
building. It would be odd and inappropriate if Christians didn’t. But if I live
15 minutes or more from where I go to church as most Christians seem to
these days, my primary “mission field” or “target market” is likely to be my
workplace (which may well be a fifteen minute drive in the opposite direction),
or across my own backyard fence, or the neighbourhood Bible study a Baptist friend has
down the street from me, or the people I meet in the businesses I frequent
every day. The guy who gives me my haircut. The waitress who brings my lunch to the table twice a week. My son’s English teacher. My mom’s care provider.
These are the people who know me. These are
the people for whom I have opportunity to do good things on a daily basis.
These are the people who see me in good situations and bad ones and get to
decide whether what I believe has any substance to it or not.
Nine out of ten times, if your church is
growing it is because Christians are cashing in on THESE sorts of opportunities.
It is these sorts of people who are getting saved, being discipled, and telling their friends and neighbours about Christ. By the grace of God there
may be others reached through their testimonies, people with whom you or I would never have opportunity to establish relationships.
“Marketing Jesus” (if we must call it that)
is not about whether our church uses social media effectively, or about making
sure the big corporate events we plan accurately reflect our denominational
peculiarities, or about the elders having a correct read on the demographics of
the neighbourhood where our church is built. It’s about you and me day by day taking
the opportunities that exist right in front of our faces.
Wherever we live.
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