The Idol of Marketing (part 2)

When dealing with marketing a church there are many areas I love, and many that I have problems with. To start out I want to say that I believe marketing can be a great tool used to glorify and proclaim God. But it can also become an idol that we place before God. I want to look at who we market to and how we do it.

Now I understand that all churches are different, so this will not apply to all, but this is true for the average church in America.

The 35 year old male is the most coveted prize to be won for the church marketer. He has 2 kids, an attractive wife, likes football and reads Maxim magazine (And no, I will not link to it.) This person has heard of church, and will go on occasion during holidays if his wife makes him. He finds church to be boring, feminine and doesn’t understand why he has to sing love songs. This person is what the church marketer will spend all his time and money trying to reach.

So how do we typically reach him? One way is to show him things he likes, as to make him understand that church is no different than what he is used to. We show attractive men and women, with big smiles and nice clothes. We do parodies of TV shows and movies so he understands that we all watch these things. We let him know how awesome our kids programs are, and how fun his children will have. We make sure that everything has a masculine feel to it, so he understands church is not for women only. And last, we inform him how short the message is and how rock the music is.

From a marketing standpoint this all makes sense. You are breaking down barriers to a product he never understood. You are giving him easy options to choose. But from a biblical standpoint I see many flaws with this model.

Where is God in any of this? If you read above you will see that He is not mentioned once in the marketing. Man and entertainment are placed before God in marketing. We trust more that we can get people to church with our flash then we trust that God will do what he says.

With all that said, how then do we market? How do we still speak to the 35 year old male and still place God above everything? We will be diving into this topic more in the coming months, but wanted to start by opening up the conversations. Am I completely off base, or should we be looking for a new model of marketing?

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