Matt Mings on Book Comments: “Selling Out the Church”
Couple days ago I read “Selling Out the Church: The Dangers of Church Marketing” by Philip D. Kenneson and James L. Street.
I highly recommend this book for any pastor with the firm conviction that form and content cannot be separated, who is also struggling with the outside pressures of church growth marketing agendas.
The authors pose the question “Can the market-driven church remain Christ’s church?” The answer comes scripturally and theologically as a resounding “No.”
The reason is that marketing is a concept of self-interested exchange, but Christianity is a concept of gift.
This book elucidates my belief that the ideology of “responsiveness” to felt needs (aka, church marketing) essentially reduces the church to a quivering mass of availability. Yet, Christ in scripture clearly intends the church to be a journey of people embodying Christ’s Gospel and the kingdom of God.
One of the gems from the book:
“You can’t market a community that is called to engage in such things as truth-telling, forgiveness, hospitality to strangers, self-sacrifice, and love of one’s enemies.”
It is a rule of life for my faith community that our vocation is to live in a way that demands our peculiar way of being be understood through experience. As in the book, marketing the church wholly undercuts and sidesteps this mission.
SO TELL ME SOMETHING:
Have you read the book? What are your thoughts on church marketing?
——
Brian Niece
www.brianniece.com
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Category: Book Comments, Christianity, Mission, The Church 5 comments »
April 19th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Brian,
Thanks for the post, it was very timely. To start with I have not read this particular book. Having said this, it would be interesting to note wether or not the author dealt with the inherent “invitation” of the Gospel. I think of the Samaritan woman and her powerful testimony, “come and see” (John 4:29). There certainly is a differenece between marketing and invitation, the question is do we know where one begins and the other ends.
April 20th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
I got to your post from my Google Alert on the topic of “church marketing” – just FYI (doing some good there on SEO).
I’m not agreeing with your premise here. First of all, by equating “church marketing” and “felt needs” (you said, “aka”), I think you are a taking a narrow view of what the term church marketing really means.
Yes, if we are trying to sell the world that in our church that there is no sin, no hell, no consequences, then, YES, I would agree that church marketing is deceptive advertising. It has no place in the proclamation of the gospel.
But if church marketing is (and I dont’ have this definition coined in anyway, just making it up here as I go) more about “marketing” in a sense that you have something that people need to know about and using whatever tools and means of communication necessary to proclaim that – then church marketing is nothing more than great evangelism. Use the most innovative resources available in our time and do it with excellence so as to represent the Lord well – as well as attracting the attention of the non-believer (aka “buyer”) – then church marketing has its place.
Let’s not equate “church marketing” always with some watering down of the truth of being a disciple. While the gem you highlight above is true, I would not equate it with what alot of people are trying to do in the name of church marketing. I do not believe that we are called to tell the world the challenges of discipleship first. First we tell them about the grace of God and about the love of Jesus. (This is likely the biggest hurdle we have). As people are overwhelmed by His mercy and salvation is presented, I believe the call to full discipleship, while no doubt challenging, is met with a compelling agreement and willingness to follow Christ.
We must be vigilant against deception in our efforts to reach the lost (watering it down to meet their needs) – but if we can reach a greater audience by having sophisticated, excellent and relevant “marketing” then we are doing what God wants us to do.
Thanks for the dialog.
-Randy
April 21st, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Randy–
Thanks for the dialogue. I much appreciate it.
First, I’m not equating church marketing with “felt needs” but rather “responsiveness to those felt needs.
Secondly, in the spirit of transparency, I do not agree with the authors of this book that all publicity/marketing/etc in the church is unnecessary, misguided, and wrong.
We have a nice website from my my faith community; we use brochures; we package series in enticing titles with nice graphics, etc.
What I do concur with is the idea that a market-driven church is establishing its witness on a concept of self-interested exchange. Whereas authentic Christianity community (aka “church”) is a concept of gift.
Let me explain … If some of us in my faith community want to get more people to come on Sunday, we would naturally find a way to market to others whom we might appeal to (those burned by traditional churches, those to whom “church” is a foreign concept, those who do not feel befriended or loved). This is a concept of self-interested exchange. We want something (more people to be in a Sunday worship setting). The people we are appealing to want something (love, friendship, a church that doesn’t condemn them, etc.).
However, if we in our faith community simply want to live out the double command of loving God and loving neighbor on this journey in the Way of Christ, then we know we can only do this by way of a gift from God. Others will only come into the community by way of gift.
This is a simplified example, but I hope it makes the distinction.
You might ask, “But how will others know about the gift if they aren’t told?” And here I would say we do try to maintain an excellent website and other forms of communication.
But our goal is not to grow this church. Our goal is to be a presence in our community and be faithful to the way of Christ.
Does this make sense?
Shalom–
Brian
April 21st, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Mark–
The authors don’t specifically touch on the concept of invitation. They focus more on embodying the gospel in a communal way.
Of course, when Jesus said “Come and see” it was not an invitation to First Synagogue of Caesarea. Instead the invitation was to come see how he and his friends lived their lives.
The authors (and I) would say that church marketing as the beginning point of evangelism gets off on the wrong foot by inviting persons to come to an event, or a building, or a fill-in-the-blank.
Whereas “Come and See” type evangelism evolves out of personal contact and relationships.
Shalom–
Brian
June 25th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
[...] I’m thinking to myself that so many things are wrong with the question she just asked: We don’t have clients; we have people. We don’t thank people we see; we embrace them. We don’t ask people to come to “services”; people are invited to worship gatherings. People can’t come to “service”; people must go out to engage in service. What the heck does promotion in a faith-community setting mean anyway? (I’ve discussed this in response to church marketing before) [...]