Church Marketing Sucks

Over the Christmas break I took a couple of days and read James B. Twitchell’s latest book, Shopping for God: How Christianity Went From In Your Heart To In Your Face. A professor of English and advertising at the University of Florida, James is the author of several other gems including Lead Us Into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism and Living It Up: America’s Love Affair with Luxury. The titles of his books are a good indicator of the lens Twitchell views life through. In Shopping for God, he is no less insistent on suggesting that too much of life is all about too much. “Everything in this culture goes to market,” says Twitchell, “why should religion be any different?”

Twitchell admits up front that he is a “cold Christian.” He describes himself as an “apatheist”, which basically means “a disinclination to care all that much about one’s own religion and an even stronger disinclination to care about other people’s.” Twichtell says he has a difficult time reading the Bible, but he appreciates when the stories are explained. He likens it to his own job as an English professor. Both pastor and teacher closely examine the text and make the story come alive.

I am going to break this book review up into several posts over the next week or so. I think what Twitchell has to say is both interesting and relevant. I appreciate the depth of research that has gone into this book as the historical perspectives provide an excellent backdrop for how we have arrived where we are today.

However, I will say up front that this book really frustrates me. I was torn between agreeing with many of Twitchell’s arguments but disagreeing with many of his conclusions. My biggest problem is that Twitchell leaves absolutely no room for God’s will. It’s as if Twitchell is suggesting that nothing from the early church until now has been a work of God and that it has all been man-made. Given the worldview Twitchell claims, this outlook is not surprising but it is most certainly misleading.

Over the next few posts I’ll highlight some of the history of church marketing, including Twitchell’s views on mainline denominations, megachurches and how we arrived where we are today.