Ministry Marketing CoachMinistry Branding and Marketing that Works

Have you ever read copy in church advertisements like the lines below?

• “Join us this Sunday for anointed Holy Ghost preaching, dynamic praise and worship and intimate fellowship in the body”
  
• “At our church you will hear sound expository preaching on the doctrines of Grace”
  
• “We exalt the Savior, equip the saints, and edify the servants!”
  
• “Our church is a corporate outlet for truth-filled praise and worship!”
  

I can’t tell you how many church signs, brochures, worship bulletins, and websites I have seen that have sentences like those above. Much marketing coming out of churches today uses terms the general populace doesn’t understand.

We may know what words like, “exalt”, “equip”, and “anointed” mean, but what do these things mean to the people who have never or rarely been inside the walls of a church? (Personally, I am working on what “magnify” really means…it’s not about magnets, right?) For example, for many people the word “gospel” is not about the message of Jesus Christ, it’s a genre of music. You can’t help people understand the real meaning of the gospel, until you understand the people you want to reach.

One problem with church outreach happens when church communicators use church-speak in their marketing promotions in the general marketplace. Without intending to, these church marketers are making their church more appealing to people who already go to church, and doing little to build bridges with people who don’t. Church people notice the marketing, the rest of the people don’t. No wonder most churches grow more through transfer of memberships, than they do through evangelistic outreach.

If non-believing people are not responding to your marketing outreach, perhaps part of your problem is you are not speaking the same language as the audience you want to reach. Maybe you are speaking Christianese. Ginger Sinsabaugh-MacDonald has a fun book available on her website Christianese, Ginger defines Christianese:

Christianese: (kris’ch nez’) n. 1. Language spoken by church goers that is seldom understood by anyone else

Her book has some funny definitions:

• Butt Dust What many children think God made people out of, due to their mis-interpretation of Psalm 103:14 He is mindful that we are but dust
• Hip Youth Pastor: (HYP) the young guy at church with a clean shaven head, cool shades and Starbucks addiction who looks uncomfortable in a tie (male species).
• Female Hip Youth Pastor: the bubbly young lady at church with gobs of artistic talent and no Starbucks addiction because she doesn’t make as much money as her male counterpart and can’t afford it.
• Calvary: the place outside of Jerusalem where Jesus died on the cross, not to be confused with the city in Canada–Calgary or cavalry, which is troops trained to fight on horseback.

The book could be something fun to talk about in your next staff meeting. But as funny as the terms are, Ginger would agree, speaking Christianese is no laughing matter. If you are not using vocabulary the people you want to reach understand, you are wasting your money in marketing promotional materials and you will have trouble reaching people with the gospel.

5 Steps to Cleaning Up Your Church Marketing Language:

1. Start with your audience in mind: Instead of just brainstorming in your office how you want to creatively word your message, write copy with specific people in mind. If you define your audience more clearly and have a mental image of the people to whom you are speaking, the best vocabulary will emerge in your mind from understanding them.

2. Purge your copy of words that need to be explained: Be careful to use only terms that have a clear meaning to your target audience. Try using a thesaurus to find other ways of saying what you want to say.

3. Make your meaning plain: When you have to use a specialized term, define the meaning of the word in your copy.

4. Test your copy: Show your materials and concepts to people in your target audience to get their candid impressions and reactions to your writing. It’s not as hard as it sounds, just ask, most people would love to help. Say, “I am working on a writing project and I need another set of eyes, would you mind looking at what I have written and telling me if I am coming through clearly?”

5. Make a commitment to keeping church-speak out of your marketing materials: Help ministry leaders understand the value of clear communication and revisit church documents like mission statements, descriptions of ministries, expressions used from the platform, etc.