Ministry Marketing CoachMinistry Branding and Marketing that Works

Some ministry leaders are very skeptical that an awareness of marketing is important for ministry. Sometimes they cast people who use marketing principles in ministry in the worst possible light. In their zeal they will work against your using marketing concepts in the church. “Marketing is beneath the dignity of the message”, they say. “Marketing panders to the consumerist attitudes of the world” Their book titles warn of the “Dangers of Church Marketing”, the “Market-Driven Church”, saying Christian marketers are “Selling Jesus” or “Selling out the Church”.

I understand their concerns are heartfelt and sincere. In fact, they care so much to get the message of protecting the church from marketing they use many marketing media channels to tell the story of the great dangers of marketing. You see blogs, books, websites, radio shows, email blasts, news releases, and even knock-off posters. Many tactics are used to get the message out that marketing is bad. In fact, in many of the cases, the anti-marketing messengers have better marketing than the pro-marketing messengers.

Anti-Marketing Writers are Great at Selling their Message!

Personally, I love their book jackets with great graphics, compelling headlines, teaser copy on the back of the book. I like how they have provided “social proof” to help close the sale on their books. Endorsement quotes from leading people recommending the book.

In a stroke of genius they distribute their book through the most popular book distributors so we can find their works in the book stores all over the country. I was glad to find their books on Amazon.com—perhaps the best distribution channel for book selling anywhere.

I carefully read the reader reviews before I made my decision to buy the books. Thankfully, the reviewers (also known of as “customers” of anti-marketing) all let me know how much the book would help me avoid the pitfalls of evil marketing.

Anybody else see the irony of using marketing to promote an anti-marketing mentality?

Let’s be honest. I have read these books that sound the alarm against marketing and have found they have a few good critiques of particular marketing activities that have been tried by some. But they haven’t really demonstrated marketing is an evil influence in ministry that should be avoided all together. (There’s a lot of “baby” in their “bathwater!”) They have merely taken apart a straw marketing man of their own design.

If they believe marketing is so inherently bad, it seems hypocritical for them to use marketing to sell their anti-marketing message! When it comes to marketing, some of these anti-marketers have already been there and sold the t-shirt! (Pyrocrisy?)

Where are their solutions for church outreach?

Read all the anti-ministry marketing books in print, you won’t find many of them listing ways churches can better reach their communities. I love how one describes the solution for outreach. After calling people to a deeper commitment to worship, liturgy and reading of the scripture (all very good) the skeptic says churches should:

“Permit Seekers Easy Access to Information about the Church:
Designate key people, who are gifted in building relationships, to help befriend newcomers. Create a non-pressured approach to new people that will avoid both forced friendliness and uncaring anonymity. Personally invite seekers to a home fellowship group or special gathering where they can meet the elders and pastoral team. Show people love but do not chase them or cling to them” (Selling Jesus: What’s Wrong With Marketing the Church, Webster, 155)

“Permit” seekers? Isn’t that a little too close to sensitivity to seekers here? Hmm? “Seeker-permissive church” anyone? And what in the world is “easy access” to information about the church? Could it be a brochure? How about a website? There’s no easier access to information than in the media that is already being delivered to their doors–I feel an advertisement coming on!

Would a church information booth be permitted? What information should be shared? How do you know how to word what you communicate so you are communicating clearly?

What is a “non-pressured approach to new people” and how do you know if it will feel like “forced friendliness” and or “uncaring anonymity” to the seeker? What if what we think as “not clinging” turns out to feel like downright snobbishness to the newcomer?

If we are going to personally invite new comers to a “home fellowship group” can we use mail? Can we store the names of seekers in a database so we don’t lose track of their names? Or would having such a database be too much like chasing them?

Where does the church find “key people who are gifted in building relationships”? When they turn out to be people who work in sales and marketing (and they often will be from there), are they permitted to use what they know from their work in “building relationships?”

What’s Really the Deal Here?

Anti-ministry marketing books are not usually written by ministry leaders from churches. They are usually written by professors in Christian schools who don’t have to run an outreach ministry in a church, they are written by academic people who need to write books.

If anti-marketing books are written by ministry leaders, they are written by people who have a  particular theological axe to grind, leaning toward a specific view of the atonement, Divine election, or eschatology. In other words, their books, blogs, etc are tools to help them “promote” (dare we say, “market”) their other agendas.

When they try to help churches in outreach communications, their recommendations sound strikingly like what you would expect to hear in a church marketing seminar. Marketing is not bad, when the people who do it are not bad. Marketing is what you make of it.

I take the missionary point-of-view when I read the anti-marketing books. I spent the largest part of my ministry working cross-culturally. I have had ministry to international students studying in the United States, I was an associate pastor in a Chinese church, and I served in international missions in places all over the world. I know how communication can be a complicated task and that adapting your presentation and approach is needed many times.

If You Can’t Do it, Teach it!

Sometimes I would like to take these people who criticize ministry marketing on a trip overseas and plop them down in the middle of a foreign culture and let them spend a year trying to launch a ministry. Often, the same people who don’t understand ministry marketing are the same people who don’t get cross-cultural ministry.

They would learn in short order what ministry leaders who don’t have theological axes to grind with evangelicals and do not have the luxury of working from academic ivory towers know. They would discover what the people who help move their anti-ministry marketing books from the warehouses of the printing press to the shelves of the bookstore and into the shopping bags of Christian book buyers already know. Marketing helps in all kinds of Christian communication!

If ministry in the church were merely showing up reading the Bible and preaching expository sermons to people, they might have a point. Most of the world’s people are not rich enough or literate enough to have access to books by dead Puritans anyway. These people would really be out of place if they tried their anti-marketing spin in the real world of missions!

These books and blogs spend a lot of time decrying the business of administrating an actual church. If only churches had a tenure program!

Why do I blog about church marketing so much?

This blog is not a comprehensive theology of everything about ministry or church life. This is a blog about marketing for churches and ministries. So I talk about it a lot on this site. (Go figure!)

I don’t agree with everything that is done in the name of church marketing any more than I agree with everything done in the name of Christ.

And whatever definition of marketing people may find as a “straw man” to be used against church marketing, it is not likely to be the same as the definition that is actually used for church marketing. Church marketing is it’s own genre of marketing, quite different from other forms of marketing. (Just as political marketing, social marketing, sports marketing, are all different genres of marketing with their own rules, issues, etc. )

If the anti-marketing marketers want to talk against ministry marketing, I would hope they would actually study it–and not just surf around looking for a few bad examples of marketing excess that confirm their biases.  (For the record, church marketing is not a synonym for “Emerging church“.)

Marketing has something important to contribute to Christian outreach communication planning. Just like anthropology has something to contribute to missions–you can use part of it, you don’t have to buy the whole thing!

Just because a ministry marketing blog talks about marketing, doesn’t mean the author reduces ministry to mere marketing. I am under no impression that marketing is a panacea cure-all for the church. This blog is looking at various ways to use media to communicate the gospel and connect with people ministers would like to reach with the ministry of the church. I hope you find it helpful!