Marketing Jesus
Christianity Today (a well respected monthly Christian magazine) has released it’s January 2009 issue with the cover story “Jesus is Not A Brand” by Tyler Wigg-Stevenson. I read the article late last night and because it stirred up many different emotions in me, I decided to reflect on it a little before writing this post. My purpose with this Navigating Your Marketing blog is to encourage and educate church leaders to implement marketing that communicates their message with excellence. So, naturally, I am a church marketing proponent. I try to keep my writing positive and veer from the negative…there is enough negativity and attacking going on in the Christian community as it is. I don’t need to get caught up in that! So, let me say outright, that this is not an attack against the article or author but merely a response.
The Best Story
I have said several times that marketing is simply telling your story (as defined by Seth Godin). To tell a story you need to communicate – implementing whatever methodologies that enhance the story telling most effectively. Churches have the best message on the planet to communicate but are (in most cases) some of the worst story tellers, communicators, and marketers I have ever met. We have the best and most important story to tell and we need to use every method and tool we possibly can implement to tell that story as clearly and dynamically as possible…people’s lives depend on it! Churches need to equip and support their members with finely crafted tools that help them connect with people in their sphere of influence (friends, neighbours, colleagues, and family) and in a combined individual and organizational effort share with passion the life-changing story of Jesus.
Every Church is Marketing
What churches all too often neglect to realize is that they are marketing even when they think they are not. Because marketing is telling a story it draws upon the sights, smells, and culture of the organization as the message is conveyed. You tell a story by communicating. Communicating is more than words - it incorporates all the experiential senses. Impressions are made and messages sent in the story telling that are very subliminal. People make judgements very quickly about the individual telling the story and about the church organization, it’s building, pastor, music, greeters, and on it goes. Every element of your church culture makes an impression on how people interact with and receive the story. Yes, Jesus is the “product” but marketing Jesus includes the packaging as well and every church has its own unique packaging.
Giving Churches More Credit Than They Deserve
So, with that said, I think the article “Jesus is not a Brand” really looks at church marketing from a very corporate and commercial perspective and in doing so actually gives most churches more credit than they deserve! The article delves into it’s four conflict points of church marketing “self-creation, discontent, relativism, and fragmentation”. I see where the writer is coming from but I really don’t think most churches are so strategic in their marketing initiatives that they actually consistently do the things he suggests and as a result the conflicts he describes are fairly non-existent. Sure, some churches do plan out their marketing with proper marketing principles and plans in place but those cases are few and far between.
My experience is that in 90+% of the cases, churches fail to strategize, plan, or implement any focused marketing initiatives at all. That’s the real problem! Churches on a church-by-church basis have to do an assessment of their unique organizational culture, their mission, and their vision and get down to creating a plan to tell the story of Jesus as it is lived out through their community and hone that message with the greatest excellence that they can afford…no excuses! If churches were implementing marketing as Stevenson implies, then I certainly could disagree more strongly with his opinions.
In the end, the title of the article is correct. Jesus is not a brand! There is however more to marketing than branding and the way each church tells the story and markets itself is unique. The other thing to keep in mind is that most churches do not look at their marketing as a corporate process – and that is a good thing. The motivations most churches have is to help people develop a personal relationship with Jesus. Just as each church is unique, each person’s journey to that growing personal relationship is unique…and well, personal. The goal of the church is to communicate the biblical message and story of Jesus and then get out of the way and let God do His unique spiritual life-transforming work.
Marketing Jesus – Yes!
Churches use marketing, they must use marketing, and they must improve their marketing. Let’s do the best job we can to communicate as clearly as possible the life-changing story of Jesus. The story is unique and must implement every marketing method and technique possible to get the message out there clearly to impact and change our communities and our world!
What do you think?
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