Last week, we asked the question, “Who are you?” 256 of you let us know. According to our calculations …
30% of you are on staff at a local church in a non-pastoral position. Congratulations on being in the majority! Another 28% of you are actually in the pastor’s seat at your local church. That means nearly 60% of you are actually in the trenches, working hard to make sure the church doesn’t suck. Hopefully. Keep trying new things and telling us what’s working and what’s not!
18% of you aren’t actually on staff with a church or a marketing firm, but you do help with your church’s marketing. What kind of roles are you in? Volunteer? Friend of a church staffer? That guy in the congregation who stands up and screams crazy ideas in the middle of a sermon? Another 14% of you aren’t actively involved in church marketing, you just think about it from the pews. I’d be willing to bet you have some great ideas, don’t be ashamed to speak up.
A slim 4% of you are actually on staff with a church marketing organization. Which means we’re not reaching the professional church marketer, which is probably OK. It’s the folks in the trenches who really need the help.
Lastly, 8% of you said other, mostly folks who fell under multiple categories or wanted to be more specific.
This week, we’re asking how exactly you feel about all this crazy tree-hugging creation care we’ve been talking about?
brad
May 8, 2007
I don’t think I could ever work for a church marketing organisation (there is such a thing?). No offense if you do — rather you have a rather large portion of my respect.
Geoff Brown
May 9, 2007
I’m amazed how few respondents are trying to do church marketing on an unpaid/volunteer basis, rather than how many are paid to do it, either as clergy or as a church marketing professional.
It suggests to me that either smaller churches (i.e. less well funded churches) have not come to terms with the idea of church marketing at all, or that they have not looked in their congregations for generic marketing people who can lend a hand for their church.
It also suggests to me that we could/should be getting ideas from the people who are marketing pros outside the church spectrum. I don’t think we are wedded to the “not invented here” problem.
Gloria
May 9, 2007
Volunteer.
The Youth pastor at my church sometimes calls the the “Creative Director” of the youth ministry.
Sounds classy but it doesn’t pay anything. :P
I actually went to school to study “Church Communication Arts” but my emphasis was on theatre. I think I would actually love to work for a Church marketing Org– mostly because I should think the process would become very familiar and the work could be eternally varied. sounds great to me! Now if only I had more training. :P
Why do you think you couldn’t, brad?
Matthew
May 9, 2007
I hope this isn’t too controversial of a topic – but I wish we saw more marketing companies who were able to work well with churches rather than church marketing companies. We are a church plant that went with a marketing/consulting firm for churches and they promised us gigantic discounts – then marked up all items by 100-150% to recoop money. I wish they would have just given us the bottom line in the beginning and we could have weeded through what was affordable and what was not.
brad
May 9, 2007
Well Gloria, here goes:
I’ve volunteered and worked for churches in various communications roles for several years. The idea of (over and over) having to sell myself to churches, first by explaining what I do and why it’s important, then why it’s worth a living wage, and *then* having to justify every little decision I need to make — well it takes more than I’ve got in me. (Marketing isn’t nearly as developed in the Canadian churches as it seems to be in American ones. It needs to be approached entirely differently here, so perhaps that goes some way to explaining my personal hesitations.)
But wait there’s more! Latching onto something that Geoff and Matthew both touched on, concentrating on marketing ‘by church for church’ is (probably) too narrow a goal. How do you avoid preaching to the choir?
Penultimately, I’m afraid that ‘familiar process’ and ‘eternally varied work’ sounds like a paradox to me. :-) I know what you mean, but I think it would pretty quickly go one way or the other.
Finally, there is the question of sustainability. Can a church afford a professional marketing campaign every time it wants to do something? And can the systems put in place by the marketing company be maintained and built upon by the church? If not, the worth is severely limited!
If you can fight through all of this and still be engaged, impassioned and committed to the Church, you’re worthy of my deepest respect! If one of those 4% who do it would like to respond to this, I’d love to hear from you!
Mean Dean
May 9, 2007
Does this mean 80% of the population specializes in the field of church marketing?
Wow, whatever happend to tent makers !-)
Gloria
May 10, 2007
“Finally, there is the question of sustainability. Can a church afford a professional marketing campaign every time it wants to do something? And can the systems put in place by the marketing company be maintained and built upon by the church? If not, the worth is severely limited!”
Why would it need to have a marketing campaign every time? There are probably 10 churches within walking distance of my house. If each Church had maybe 3 jobs a year I think someone would have plenty to do. :P
And as for sustainability, I think that’s part of the job, knowing how to give churches the tools to do it. Perhaps working with one church *would* be easier… but I should think that it would be an awfully great adventure. ;)
“If you can fight through all of this and still be engaged, impassioned and committed to the Church, you’re worthy of my deepest respect!”
If I can survive Bible College and still be committed to the church, I’m pretty sure I can survive ANYthing.
:P
Kevin D. Hendricks
May 10, 2007
Mean Dean, I think you’re interpretating our oh-so scientific poll incorrectly. (Or making a joke I didn’t get.)
You can’t derive the 80% just by looking at the opposite of the 18%–you have to look at the other questions. Because the other roughly 80% don’t necessarily specialize in church marketing. They’re pastors and staff members and people in the pews.
And never mind that you can’t extrapolate this to the entire population. Based on 250 people who visited our site and voted. ;-)