Marketing Morality

Church leaders today have widely varying thoughts about how church marketing effects the integrity of the Gospel. Many see using solid marketing as contrary to Jesus intentions. While I'm sure I can't provide all the answers to the debate, I feel I've arrived at a place of balance for myself that I'd like to share with you.

First, in my view marketing and preaching are similar in definition. Marketing can be viewed as a "sub-dialect" of whatever language you are speaking. The words marketers use are intended to evoke feelings and thoughts within the target audience who will then act accordingly. By that raw definition marketing is not at all dissimilar to preaching or teaching. We use language to cause a change of thought and behavior in people. The only true differences are content and format.

Second, western culture is now used to being "marketed" into doing things. In many ways, consumers feel if the marketing isn't good, the product isn't good either. In essence, the package speaks to the quality of the product. I've found this to be true of attracting people to events and to church in general. If things are not "packaged" in a way that they feel comfortable with, they won't come. While this may be a cultural flaw, it is one we can't get away from and will have to address. I choose to embrace it rather than fight it.

Third, good marketing requires you to think out your course, be intentional about how you present yourself, and be clear in how you present ideas. There have been all sorts of great ideas that have gone nowhere because the presentation of those ideas suffered from poor planning and bad execution. Marketing adds a step between idea and execution requiring consideration of the human element of the endeavor. Since everything in church life depends almost solely on the human element, good marketing can only serve to help achieve overall success.

For these reasons and others I've decided to use the "language" of marketing to help motivate people into living a more godly and Biblical lifestyle. There are many problems and pitfalls to using marketing as a ministry tool. Maybe I'll touch on those another time.

Feel free to share any marketing ideas or thoughts.

New Blogger Skin

It's not that I couldn't do it. It just takes so LONG!

I finally bit the bullet. I made the skin of Kids Ministry Abstract fit the rest of our kids' ministries site. It seems to work. I'm happy with it. Let me know if you like/hate it or if something is broken.

Anti-Pack Rat

I am the anti-pack rat. I hate keeping things for the sake of keeping them... except for technology. I'm bad about technology. I like to keep it around. I just threw out some memory so old no computer would run it.

However, most other stuff I don't keep around long. In fact, I'm a bad choice for a clean up helper for this reason. My philosophy is "if you can't think what you'd use it for in less than 5 seconds, you don't need it." Or better yet, "if you haven't used it in the last year, and won't use it in the next, bu-bye."

AWAY WITH JUNK!

I tend to offend often with this sort of mentality. I guess some folks like lots of stuff lying around. More often than not, I end up throwing away objects connected with memories. People get bent out of shape. It's not pretty.

So share a "dumpy" story with me.