Church Marketing Sucks

What’s the great thing about a well thought-out outreach? The way that it can take on a life of its own and go from impacting hundreds to impacting thousands. What’s the great thing about not hogging all the glory for yourself? The glory goes to God.

The Old Way
That’s what my home church, The Vineyard Church of Columbus learned last week when it gave up its own successful “Single Parents Fair” outreach in favor of joining up with other churches to sponsor a mega-outreach.

My husband and I had worked the event in the past, which included the distribution of free school supplies, games and crafts and even motorcycle rides for the kids and free oil changes, free car washes, free hair cuts, free legal advice, financial counseling and more for the adults. A free BBQ lunch was provided for everyone. Turn-out was always fantastic and it was a great way to introduce the community to the outwardly focused message of the church.

The New Way
But this year, when the church was approached by the team behind Jammin’ Against the Darkness to co-sponsor the local version of the event with the First Church of God, they jumped at the opportunity.

The church immediately shifted gears from their typical planning and put out the call for event volunteers and all the school supplies that members could haul in to the church. It wasn’t long before the local radio stations were involved, along with a dozen or so other churches.

Jammin’ is an outreach event that gets it right. Popular NBA stars, Christian rock stars, BMX and skateboard pros, a 3-on-3 tournament and even a slam dunk contest. The event went on all day outside the Schottenstein Center and then shifted in-doors in the evening for a concert and testimonies by former OSU basketball star Michael Redd, Ohio State University head football coach Jim Tressel and others.

The vision of Jammin’ is to create an excellent evangelistic opportunity for and by the local church. All evangelism must be focused on building the local church. We work to network, organize and empower the local church with an outreach that appeals to our secular society on the basis of two things that interest them the most—sports and music—and then give them what they need the most: a hearing of the Gospel with a call to respond.

So by bringing local churches together an event that used to be strictly entertainment was also able to offer a major community service. And an event that used to offer community service was raised several notches, resulting in way more people being served than a single church could have managed alone.

Lesson Learned
It’s not about putting on a flash concert. It’s about true outreach to the community that got local churches involved and gives people a taste for churches of different sizes and denominations.

That’s the thing about giant outreaches. While mega-churches have the flair (and the $$) to put on giant events, the average church doesn’t. What Jammin’ shows is that it’s not just OK to partner with other churches for an outreach, it’s actually a really great idea.

It means people might end up at your church, or they might end up at someone else’s. But what matters is that they end up at the Church.