Ministry Marketing CoachMinistry Branding and Marketing that Works

Church Marketing includes every contact your church has with people. It is so important that your church keep all facilities clean. One issue many churches, even large ones, overlook is that clean bathrooms make a difference to guests. Clean restrooms may not sound like a part of ministry marketing, but they are! So are clean classrooms, a well-kept sanctuary and grounds, and even the absence of strange odors in the building.

Kerry Bural, vice president for public relations and marketing with the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, wrote an article on BP this week Scary halls, walls & stalls that offers some sage advice to some churches: Clean up your act please!

New to his community, he visited a church with his family and found himself in a unfriendly, musty-smelling, poorly kept house of God.

He writes:

“Then I made my worst mistake of the morning: I visited the restroom. I was aghast to find dirty fixtures and a trash basket overflowing with … trash (I’ll leave it at that). I’m still mystified by the condition of this room. How did it get into such a deplorable state without anyone noticing? We were among the first to arrive, so this catastrophe couldn’t have happened that morning. Was it left from Wednesday night?”

Bathroom Church Marketing?

It is so important that you keep all of your facilities clean. A clean restroom says a lot to a family that is visiting your church. If a restroom isn’t clean and well-stocked, it sends a wrong message to people. Many times churches don’t take that extra effort to really clean and polish everything in their church. Don’t let the church become cluttered and dusty. Keep it clean.

Don’t stop with how clean the church looks. If your church smells strange, musty or unclean, it, too, will run people off. Many new deodorizers and cleaners can help put the shine and fresh smell back into your facilities.

Walk around outside your church, too. How do the grounds look? Are the gardens kept in good condition? Are weeds growing up through the sidewalks? What is the condition of the paint and windows? Do they look like they need work?

Take a walk through the streets where the people you want to reach reside. Notice the care they take with their homes, lawns and gardens. When they come to the church and see the unkempt lawns, and come inside and find a dirty, strange-smelling church, they may feel you don’t pay attention to other details. And, they may not come back.

Little Things Mean a Lot!

“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” (Luke 16:10 NIV)

Little things do matter. Visitors notice things more than you realize. You may be oblivious to the problems because you’ve become immune to your surroundings. The problems may not be noticeable to you, but visitors will notice how things look and smell.

Before advertising outside the walls of the church, be sure to check it inside and out. Remember that appearance is a marketing tool within itself. Church facilities should be spic and span.

Because you are used to the way it looks and smells invite another person who doesn’t attend your church to look around. Then ask them what kinds of things they found that you can take care of. It could be ceiling tiles that are broken or missing, stains on the wall, the smell, landscaping. Get an honest outside evaluation of the look and feel of your church.

Church Upkeep and Maintenance is Everyone’s Job!

As a ministry communication leader, it may not be your job to maintain the church facilities, but not staying tuned-in to what is happening with the church in this area could have a negative impact with your media outreach efforts. You need to stay on top of what is going on! When your outreach works, you may actually be increasing the speed in which people find out how poorly kept your church facilities are. In the end, your objective of reaching people with the gospel will be impeded.

Find a tactful way to help your church leadership understand how important keeping a clean house can be, and where possible, pitch in to put your church facilities in good shape.

Kerry Bural recommends:

1. Assess the current condition of your church facilities.
2. Be honest about the style and condition of your facilities compared to other facilities in your community
3. If you are not on your church staff or in leadership, enlist support from one or more who are.
4. Get people who can take a prayerful walk through the church campus, asking the Holy Spirit to open their eyes to details that may have been overlooked.
5. Appoint people who can be the church “authority on facility freshness”.
6. Start and continually update a master “Facility Freshness Hit List.”
7. Get to work! First, determine your priorities. Don’t try to accomplish everything in one week.

Read the entire article by Kerry Bural here