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Church Marketing Stinks

07/10/2008 04:02 AM Filed in: Pastoral Stuff | Church
I don't like church advertising.

There. I said it.

I've been listening to some local Christian radio stations over the last several days because I've come to an unsettling conclusion: if we want people to know that our church is around, we're going to have to do a little (I can't stress the word "little" enough) advertising. But there are a couple of major problems:

1. We're not really interested in "Christian radio" people. God bless them if they want to come, but we're pursuing the unchurched.

2. We simply cannot fall into the same kind of "bigger is better" church advertising campaigns that plague this city.

I want to speak a little on that second point. If you listen to the radio stations that local churches advertise on, you'll hear a pretty amazing tug-of-war: "Our children's ministry is the best," "Our youth group has the best facility," "Our music is the most contemporary," "Our preaching is the most encouraging," etc., etc.

Churches have taken marketing principles from the corporate world and just plugged them into the religious community. And you know what? In the past, it's worked.

But there's a problem...

If you build your church on consumerism, you'll have a building full of consumers. Whenever the next great church with the next great preacher or music leader or fireworks extravaganza comes along, your people will bolt. And even if that never happens, even if you're always the best show in town, it's difficult to turn consumers into Kingdom of God minded people because you encouraged them to have a "me-first" mindset from the very beginning.

So what's our big ad campaign? We're going to make a few posters; print out a few business cards. But our people are going to be the driving force behind everything that we do. If they don't love on their friends and family then our church won't grow. If they don't invite the people closest to them to plug into our small Christ community then our Christ community will remain small.

I'm excited to be part of this church and I see the fire in the eyes of many of our members. Because of that, I'm longing to see how God's going to use us.

In closing, here's a rough draft of a flier idea we've had. Kinda goes against every church in our city, but we like it. Let me know what you think:

Ad 1

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