In the next few posts I want to deal with some of the ins and outs of advertising strategy. But before we get started, we need to cover the foundation you need for advertising to benefit your church. It won’t help your church one bit to advertise if you don’t have a thorough follow-up plan and next step ministries for the people your church reaches through promotion.
Too often church leaders treat advertising as an automatic cure for church growth. They have outreach promotions and special events with members driving new people to the church in order to build a crowd. The belief is the increase in numbers will lead to a few of the new people staying and thereby increasing the number of people reached by the church.
This mentality is driven by the adage (now a cliché) that “it is easier to build a core from a crowd, than it is to build a core into a crowd.” It is true it is easy to build a crowd (through advertising promotions) and in that crowd, you will likely find it easier to recruit people for your church. But there is a second issue with crowd building not addressed by the adage, and often not addressed by the churches that follow it.
When you build a crowd you have to bring new people into the church through special events, exciting programs or some other kind of seeker-sensitive program. But if you keep making contacts with new people and don’t take them very deep into the gospel, you create another problem, you could inoculate the people you want to reach against the gospel. Read the rest of the article on MinistryCOM
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