Ministry Marketing CoachMinistry Branding and Marketing that Works

There is a lot of activity these days to make the church more relevant to the people outside the church that I think is commendable. Churches are trying to make changes in the way they do things to become more understandable and attractive to the people they want to reach.

But in all the haste to become relevant, a shortcut recipe has started to develop that churches are using that they seem to think will lead their church to become more sensitive to seekers that I think is having adverse affects. There seems to be an endless supply of “me too” church marketers. These are people who imitate other churches instead of responding to the needs of the people in their communities.

In this recipe certain production and programming elements are becoming canonized into hard and fast rules for being “Relevant”

• Change your church’s name to something cool like “X-Factory.tv”
• Use edgy stock images and abstract graphics in your church marketing collateral.
• And make sure the website is better than anyone else’s!
• Digitize the worship service and raise the entertainment value of the presentation
• Ditch the choir robes and hymnals and transition the music in the worship service toward all Contemporary Pop/Rock style
• Ramp up the number of sermon series and brand each one to the hilt!
• Adopt a topical approach to preaching using ideas and examples taken from television shows and movies instead of Bible stories.
• Be sure to preach a few sermons about sex or something shocking as a crowd builder.
• Allow church visitors to become anonymous when they visit the church so they will not feel uncomfortable or singled out in the group.
• Plasma screens all around man! You got to monitor the sermon from the restrooms, as you walk. down any hall, and any place else. Don’t forget to put one in floor!
• Add caffeine to any thing you can and decorate your church to have the feel of a coffee shop.
• Everyone must dress down on the platform. Please the more holes in the jeans the better!
• Gotta get more of them “man blouse” shirts
• Pastors need facial hair. Bust out the goatees, soul patches, and chin straps.
• Did somebody say hair gel?
• Anything else we can do to add more cowbell!

Now, don’t get me wrong, I like what is happening in this approach when it is a fit with a particular target audience. But when the focus is more on adopting a style than it is on becoming more aware of people and actually meeting their needs, I think this approach becomes counter-productive to ministry. Ministry relevance is not a matter of style.

It takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people!

What about ministry for people who don’t like contemporary music? Where is the defender of the caffeine intolerant? Why not adjust the preaching style so it fits better with oral communicators, instead of just trying to look more like TV programming? If all contemporary people liked the same things, the recipe would make more sense.

I think what is most needed when a church wants to become more relevant to people is to become less “Unchurched Seeker Sensitive” by putting more emphasis on making the church more “Sensitive Seekers of the Unchurched”. In short, the church needs to stop trying so hard to attract people, and become more adept at seeking people.

This approach is more Christ-like. As Jesus said:

“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”

(Luke 19:10 NIV)

I wish there was more talk about seeking people than about attracting seekers.