Going to Market
AHOY!
I have a very exciting offer for you! What would you say if I could give you more friends, better business connections, more money, a better marriage, and an overall better life? What would you pay? 30% of what you make? 20%? What if I told you it would only cost up to 10% of your income, and in fact, you could pay as much or as little as you want? Not only that, but you can try out our services for as long as you want with absolutely no contract! You’d be crazy not to join!
Enjoy holiday celebrations, a weekly concert featuring exciting, uplifting music and a dynamic personal-improvement message, and a vast social network of people just like you! In fact, once you get plugged in, there’s an almost limitless supply of chances to meet and mingle with the movers and shakers in your community!
Come visit us this Sunday, and get ready for a better you!
It may come as no surprise that “church marketing” has become an important business, with seminars, websites, consulting, and full-time staff positions at churches across the country. According to our good friend Webster, marketing can be defined as “the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service”. In fact, the term “marketing” is really just a modern way of saying “going to market.” In other words, “we have some sort of product or service that we feel consumers would like to purchase. We give them our product, and they give us money. If they can’t pay, then we don’t provide our service, and if our product doesn’t match their expectations, then they go can get the product from somewhere else”. Is this an accurate description of what happens at the church? If it is, should it be? The more important question to ask is: “Is this an accurate description of what Jesus did?”
This week I found a great article in Christianity Today called Jesus Is Not a Brand, written by Tyler Wigg-Stevenson, author of the book Brand Jesus: Christianity in the Consumer Age. In the article, Wigg-Stevenson makes some compelling arguments against marketing Jesus like a product, since so much of the gospel stands in opposition to consumerist attitudes. Wigg-Stevenson points out that the market puts the focus on the individual. Products are supposed to make you better, healthier, cooler, and sexier. The product will put in you in the same class as one group while taking you out of another class. And in the end, this product will not be enough. A newer version will be available in next year, and you’ll need more. Consumerism puts the emphasis on your image and never-ending desire to make that image something better. And if a product doesn’t measure up, then there’s another one next to it on the shelf. The customer is always right. You are always right, and you are all that matters.
It’s a pretty sharp contrast to what Jesus said. Leave it all behind. Sell all your possessions. Let the dead bury the dead. In the end, our identity is found in Christ. Christ does not exist to define our identity.
So how do we sell something that was never meant to be sold? How do we compete when there was never supposed to be a competition?
The church has become obsessed with “business models”. In fact, many churches are now putting on business seminars with prominent business leaders who used to be church leaders and vice versa. Business concepts are being applied to the church in hiring, firing, budgeting, Pastors of Operations, growth strategies, etc. etc. etc. Of course, marketing is a huge — if not essential — component of that.
Wigg-Stevenson put it very well:
… even though there are all sorts of ways the church isn’t like a business, we begin to employ all the tools of commercial enterprise as though we were paying the body of Christ some compliment by treating it like a Fortune 500 company, with a bottom line, investor returns, supply chain, CEOS, market share, and so on. If we treat the gospel like a commodity, can we fault nonbelievers for thinking that the cross is just another logo?
The problem with running the church like a business is that when you live by that sword, you die by that sword. While Christ tells us he wants us to be unified, we have to compete. We don’t disciple anymore. We go out and recruit the top talent. We fire people and send them on their way. We see our members as clients, not parts of the body. You can lose a client or two here and there, depending on what they are or aren’t doing for us. We’d feel quite differently about losing a foot. Jesus focused on twelve and lived as a homeless drifter. We have to have thousands and live in the nicest suburb.
The question then becomes, if the church shouldn’t “market”, then how do we get the word out about our church? How do we grow? I think the answer is fairly easy. How did Jesus do it? He chose twelve guys, and he lived with them. Then he told them to go into the world a spread the good news. The agent of church growth shouldn’t be mailers or commercials, but church members going into the world — their world — and spreading the good word. If we focused on discipleship, we might have people who were confident enough to do that. If we spent more time seeking a real relationship with Jesus, and that is what we encouraged, supported, and cultivated in our churches, we might have people who could do nothing but share the love they’ve found.
First you have to find it, and churches should be obsessed with that quest. I am convinced that a church obsessed with loving God and loving others, who seeks Christ’s face, and whose members live their lives as models of Him will have no problem growing. No sales pitch required.
January 8th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Thanks for pointing out a good article. Unfortunately, the people who have the shiniest brand attract the masses, while the churches that just give out biblical truth are often left to sweep up the crumbs.
January 12th, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Hey Alec, great comment today. And your mention of Hot Pockets reminded me of a Jim Gaffigan routine. If you haven’t seen it, it’s on YouTube and it’s awesome.