Church Marketing Sucks

Andrew Pautler, a senior graphic design major at the University of Notre Dame, e-mailed us to let us know about a little project he’s been working on:

I believe that if the Catholic Church can simply contemporize the way it shares the message of the gospel with the people of America, it could reverse many of the dangerous statistics facing the church today. Instead of sitting around talking about all the problems I saw, I decided to use my senior year thesis project as an opportunity to do something about it. I created New City Catholic Church, a hypothetical Catholic parish that offers concrete recommendations and resources for parishes around the country to access.

His project consisted of three parts: a booklet of information graphics, a video campaign to spread the word and the New City web site.

This project is exciting on multiple fronts. It begs the obvious question, what if the Catholic Church were moving, both online and in print, to be advocates for new media art in the same way that they produced some of the world’s most treasured work in the past? What would that look like? And how would the beauty and richness of God be reflected online?
And folks like Andrew are a new generation of church communicators. They’re thinking and dreaming of new ways to reach people and challenging the established methods of church and community. Many of you reading this are, like Andrew, college-aged or even younger. Perhaps you’re a little older, but you have dreams beyond what the church looks like today.
Let New City Catholic Church be an example to all of us that great things happen when we stop spectating and start creating.