Many of you who are reading this are involved in churches where marketing isn’t ever approached. And when it is approached, it’s with about as much caution as is humanly possible to muster. But why are folks so scared of marketing? We asked you to help us get to the heart of the issue, and here’s what you said:
A quarter of you are afraid that you’ll end up depending on cool sermon graphics, tricky ideas and other fancy whirlygigs instead of God. Along the same lines, 22% of you are worried that you’ll nail the marketing end but come up a bit short on the ministry end, leaving people disappointed. These are certainly valid fear, as churches have fallen into these traps before.
A big chunk of you also worry about convincing people to come to church instead of experiencing God. You’re worried that the end goal marketing communicates isn’t the end goal you have in mind. And there are 17% of you who are just plain horrified by the thought of Comic Sans. Very funny guys.
The final handfuls of you are worried about two things: falling into the trap of people pleasing and communicating that you’re the “right church” for everyone. I’ve seen churches end up in both of these situations frequently, so I’m surprised they didn’t turn up more frequently.
Now it’s your turn, you 9% of “Something else”-ers let us know in the comments what scares you. And everyone else weight in on this week’s poll: Does your church follow the tradition of passing the plate?
Jonathan Brink
March 19, 2009
Oooooh. By the title of the post, I thought you were asking, “Does the church market fear?” Glad I got that one fixed. ;-P
Rosemary
March 19, 2009
In “fearing Comic Sans”, what I mean is that I fear that marketing will be trite and childish — that it infantilize or make light of something as deeply profound as an experience with God. That church and God would feel tacky and gimmicky.
Joshua
March 19, 2009
Jonathan, we have actually talked about that before. Check it out — http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com/archives/2008/06/marketing_fear.html
Richard
March 24, 2009
I attended seminary and majored in homiletics (public speaking) to prepare myself to be a pastor. Did I bypass God?
Does anyone worry that I’ll be tacky and gimmicky because I did?
If it’s okay to use speaking training, isn’t it also okay to use marketing training?
Why must Christians bypass known skills and experience to truly lead others to God?