Things I Never Understood About Church, Part 4: Church Marketing

Maybe it’s just me, but when I hear the term church marketing, I think of something insincere and slick. I think of used car salesmen with phony smiles or carefully crafted commercials encouraging you to spend your money on a product. And while that works pretty well if you’re trying to sell something, I have a hard time with the concept of “selling” the church.

The part of me that always wants to look for the best in people tells me that, more than likely, most people who engage in “church marketing” do not mean to come across like a slick car salesman or a manipulative television commercial. What they really mean to do is spread the word about God and about their church. They want people to know that God loves them, and they want people to find a place where they feel comfortable learning about God. So they put up signs and posters, they get some commercials on the radio or TV, they make some t-shirts, they leave tracts at the restaurant, they go door-to-door, they put together a website, they send out mass mailings.

And all of those things do get the church’s name (and hopefully, their message) out there. Sometimes after seeing a few posters around town, someone wearing a t-shirt, and a website, some people get curious and decide to check it out.

But I think there can, and should, be a lot more to spreading the message of God’s love than just those things. Because those things, on their own, can have the unwanted effect of turning people off—“Look, it’s just another church, putting up more posters/making new commercials/whatever. Whatever.” We forget that people are so accustomed to constant marketing that they may not be able to see our sincere intentions behind the oh-so-familiar marketing strategies. Where we see love and the desire to reach people, others may just see another slick salesman trying to get them to buy something they don’t want and may not think they need.

So what can we do? We can build relationships. In one way, that sounds so simple; in others, it’s more complicated than sending out mass mailings or wearing a shirt—because those things are often “hands-off” ways of getting the message out, and what I’m proposing is very much hands-on. We get connected with local outreach ministries and begin working, face-to-face, with people in need (physically, emotionally, financially, spiritually). We go outside our comfort zone and get to know all kinds of people in our communities—really know them. We work to make a real difference, in big ways and small ways. And we do it all because we are doing what Jesus told us to do—love God and love people. We aren’t doing it because we’re trying to get people in the doors, we aren’t doing it so more people know our names; we’re doing it because of our love. And when loving people with everything in us is our focus, rather than trying to get more people to come to church, I think we will find that more people end up wanting to check out the church because they have experienced the message firsthand in their daily lives.