Selling out?
"In the world of marketing, the church takes one of two stances. It stays away from it totally, or engages in what I would call cheesy church marketing. Bottom line; they’re not very effective.
But why don’t we market? We have the greatest news in the whole world; something everyone needs and everyone should know about. The good news is relevant to everyone’s life, every day. So why don’t we let people know more effectively what we have to offer? There are two reasons why we don’t market. One, we don’t know what promise to make. Two, we don’t know how to make good on the promises we do make." Read the rest here
For what it's worth, we do market ourselves, but we try not to make promises. In the beginning, we were gonna jump on the bandwagon and proclaim "Not your grandma's church" until my friend who isn't a Christian told me that it was lame. In retrospect, I'm not even sure we could make good on that promise just because I have no idea what your grandma's church is like!
Every church markets itself, whether it thinks it does or not. One of the ways this happens is by people talking about your church. What are they saying?
Every week, we understand that people are going to leave and they are going to talk. We don't candy coat anything or tell people that Jesus wants you to have that escalade and feel good about life all the time to manipulate them into telling their friends about this amazing church that just wants me to have the best things in life.
Every week we challenge people to follow Jesus...wherever that may lead with everything that comes along with it. I would expect people to say negative stuff...some do. But for the most part, I hear story after story about people who feel more confident now than they ever have in the past to talk about their faith and tell people where they go to church. In fact, at our All Access night this weekend with our volunteers and leaders, I'll be sharing some of these stories and once I get permission from someone who just sent me one this morning, I'll post it here.
