"Why Churches Should Not Market" (by Matt Farina)
Fri, 01/08/2010 - 3:11pm
An interesting read about the trend of 'marketing' by many Churches (especially those with a bit of fundage, me thinks): Why Churches Should Not Market.
Churches put a lot of time and thought into marketing themselves. The church marketing community has grown so large and vast the are even sites that parody what churches do. Some churches have marketing people on staff. And, every year millions and millions of dollars are invested in church marketing.
Yet, I submit that churches should do no marketing. Am I crazy?
My take? We shouldn't be marketing, but rather evangelizing. Spreading the Gospel message of Jesus Christ. Mercy, sin, pain, anger, death, new life - these are all topics that we can broach when we speak individually with others.
The unchurched (those who have never had a faith to call their own, and those who have become too 'smart,' 'trendy,' or 'enlightened' for organized religion) are becoming a greater and greater population. Evangelizing to your own flock, and to other Christians, can only do so much.
Through all your actions, you should be considering the lost sheep, as Christ did, first. Leave the 99 be.
The non-Denominational Church that I attended while in College spent a lot on marketing. And I agree with the 97% statistic. I began to notice that the majority of the people coming to this church formerly attended mainstream Christian faith traditions (Methodist, Catholic, Baptist, etc.) I label these marketing churches Passer-Trough churches, because generally, the people that attend these churches only attend for a short period time, before returning to their former faith tradition or one with a little more substance.
I wrote a post about this: "What If Starbucks Marketed Like a Church?"
"I'm a PC (practicing Catholic) and I'm only 30 years old."