Brand, Marketing, & the Church

Awhile back, I enjoyed a nice long dinner with some old friends. It was one of those dinners that was full of conversation and laughter. You know the kind where you are so in to each other that you never leave the table unless you need to relieve yourself or fill an empty glass. It was the type of dinner where you sit down to eat at 6:00 and realize six hours later (the time of your first yawn) that you have to get up and go to work in the morning. Thus, you begin to contemplate another six hours of conversation over the remaining hours of sleep that are left. Needless to say, I reluctantly choose the latter and said my goodbyes. I enjoyed a peaceful ride home reflecting on the various topics of the night as I attempted to categorize and summarize the conversation knowing that I would have to retell it all to Heather the following morning.

It was at this time that I remembered a comment made by one of my dinner companions. The comment was made in passing as we were discussing churches, for they know that I am a pastor and will be starting a new church in the area. As we were discussing churches one of the couples began reminiscing on a few of the local churches they have attended as a family. A certain church name was spoken and immediately the conversation elevated to another gear. It was amongst this chaos that someone said, “(insert church name here), now that’s a brand.” Now, please know that the context of our “church” conversation immediately followed a “business” conversation in which the two accountants at the table discussed their jobs and their desire to be forward thinking (business strategies and the like) accountants compared to an accountant who dealt in the past (auditor). So, words and concepts like vision, brand, mission, market strategies, trademark, and product were common place in our conversation and it was easy for us to parlay such comments into the conversation that followed regarding the church.

My conversation that evening highlights that fact that there is a strong temptation in the American culture today to present the church as a vendor of religious goods and services. In other words, our culture today emphasizes the need for churches to present themselves as something that is to be consumed, used, and abused much like any other vendor in the business world today that is marketing their product. Does this mean that marketing (in culturally consuming terms) has a place in the church? Personally, I don’t think marketing, speaking in culturally consuming terms, has any place in the church.

“The difficulty with the pro-marketing arguments, however, is the failure to recognize that marketing is not a values-neutral language. Marketing unavoidably changes the message—as all media do. Why? Because marketing is the particular vernacular of a consumerist society in which everything has a price tag. To market something is therefore to effectively make it into a branded product to be consumed.”

To market something is to tweak the message so that it becomes appealing and attractive to your target audience. This is a problem. First of all, if we tweak the Gospel message we walk the fine line between truth and heresy. The Gospel message is not something to be picked apart and presented in bits and pieces because it makes you feel better, selecting only the parts that you agree with. Secondly, a life of sacrificial love enduring the brutality of the world is not appealing and attractive. Finally, the Gospel message is not be regulated to a chosen few or a privileged many. The saving grace, the message of Gospel, is for all mankind no matter what race, gender, or socioeconomic status.

Does this mean that the church should no longer pursue marketing? If this is the case then one might argue that we should shut down our web sites, take down church signs, stop publishing newsletters, end the radio ads, and tell the church members to quit inviting others to church. Such an approach does not leave us with much of an option does it?

“We need to recognize that no matter what we do, consumerism will unavoidably define the context for how people view the church in our consumerist age. All communication will be perceived as marketing. All self-presentation, even church advertising, will be perceived as branding. And all outreach will be viewed as sales. There is nothing we can do to change this context.”

With this being said, the church must recognize that that no matter what we do and what we say, as a church, the consumeristic perception of the culture will always be defining the reality of their opinion. No matter how we, as a church, change our message (via marketing), culture will always receive it in consumeristic terms. After all, consumerism is the dominant language of our culture. If we cannot change the perception of the culture, no matter what our marketing approach, we must concentrate, not on our marketing strategies, but on the message we are communicating.

The message of the Gospel is a message of love, hope, forgiveness, grace, and giving. It is not a message of consumption, use, and exploitation. Just because the culture perceives the message one way does not mean that we should change the message to make it more appealing. When a church changes it's message and markets it's product, in culturally consuming terms, it is simply conforming to the ways of the world. Such actions run contrary to the life the church has been called to live in the Bible.

“The church reveals the supremacy of Christ in a world that denies his power… We love the unlovable and forgive the unforgivable, reconcile seemingly intractable hatreds and rejoice even in sorrow, persevere in hardship and serve to the point of sacrifice, and baptize and teach instead of consume and discard.”