Church Marketing Doesn't Suck, But Don't Tell Anyone

Posted by J. Mark Bertrand
on Monday, April 04, 2005
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The wheels of my subconscious turn slowly, but they grind things to a powder. Take, for example, today's revelation. I've been referred more times than I can remember to Church Marketing Sucks. People hear me bemoaning the commercialization of church, mocking the four-color postcards I get from all the area megachurches and anti-megachurches, wondering why church buildings are situated on a "campus" and marked with electronic signs at the entrances, and they think I'll find some kindred spirits at the above-mentioned site. I've visited several times, and always left scratching my head. Why? Because it's a site about how to do effective church marketing. In spite of the title, they don't think church marketing sucks.

Before today, it always puzzled me. Was it a joke? Was the original URL www.churchmarketingdoesn'tsuck.com, but they decided it was too long? Was this a form of postmodern irony, a joke that everyone got but me? As minor a problem as it is, the thing started eating away at me. I kept running across diatribes against church marketing on other people's blogs and finding links to Church Marketing Sucks. I began to think this site was the evangelical equivalent of the Sokal hoax.

Not anymore. Now I get it. The whole thing comes down to semantics. When I hear the words "church marketing sucks," I equate it with the statement: "Church marketing is a bad thing." But when the site's founders use the term, they mean, "Church marketing isn't done very well. It could be a lot better." In fact, they feature a whole array of "full service solutions" to make sure your own church marketing efforts don't suck. What appears to be a protest against church marketing is in fact a road map for better marketing. If I had drilled down deep enough, I could have alleviated my confusion long ago. The site even offers some gentle reproof to people like me:

Maybe you think the church shouldn't market itself. And if by that you mean the church shouldn't use deceptive tactics, shouldn't use dishonest methods, shouldn't misrepresent itself to get people in the door, then you really mean the church shouldn't use poor marketing efforts.

Marketing is the process of promoting, selling and distributing goods or services. It's a business concept, but something very similar happens in the church. As much as we bristle at comparing evangelism to a sales pitch, there are certain similarities.

The way you feel about this will depend on how you react to the idea that "the church should be run like a business." Personally, I want to run as far from that notion as I can get. But if you happen to think that, with certain caveats, the church is a business and the gospel is a kind of product and salvation is a transaction, then you will react differently. If you think the church has a lot to learn from corporate America about organization, management and branding, then that statement might resonate deeply.

Because (a) I've spent a good bit of time in the corporate world and (b) I've seen what successful entrepreneurs can do to a church when they take it under their wing, I tend to think that blurring the line between church and business is a bad idea. I don't like the idea of "launching" new churches, developing "mission statements" and all of that. I don't think of the church as something that's trying to penetrate a target market. When this kind of language crops up in an ecclesiastical context, the hair on the back of my neck stands on end. I admit there's something visceral and irrational about this reaction. There are all sorts of reasonable arguments that can be made for why churches need to be packaged more effectively. For whatever reason, I just can't hear them. It's hypocritical, I know. I'm the biggest consumer I know, the person most likely to fall for the marketer's hype. Still, there it is.

Maybe I've got the wrong end of the stick here. Maybe the guys at Church Marketing Sucks are onto something. Andy Crouch says, "Modernity will be remembered by the slogans of its philosophers, whereas postmodernity will be remembered by the slogans of its advertisers." If that sounds cool to you, great. But to me, it's pretty sad.