Church Marketing 1

I just finished reading an interesting book - All Marketers Are Liars by Seth Godin, all about the nature of marketing in a modern world. The bulk of the book dealt with marketing in the commercial sector, but I had quite a few ministry take-aways as well. Here's the first one.

Take-Away 1
Many church people consider the term marketing to be a bad word - they're just against the idea of trying to sell the church the same way Irish Spring sells soap. But that's because many people still equate marketing to television commercials. In essence, commercials make up a tiny (and increasingly smaller) segment of marketing. The following were all marketing decisions, whether or not the decision-makers realized it.

• A group of people in Hell, Michigan deciding not to name their church "Hell's Baptist Church." ("I don't care if you're tired! It's Sunday morning, and the whole family is going to Hell together! Now get out of bed and get your church clothes on!")
  
• The Catholic church in Beverly Hills deciding to go with brick rather than a sided pole-barn. (Think about the kind of statement that would make.)
  
• Our decision at Calvary to include more pictures of people than pictures of the building on the website. (We wanted it to be about the people, not the bricks.)

Taken individually, these decisions seem tame and acceptable. The fact that they seem like obvious decisions doesn't change the fact that they are obvious marketing decisions. When more churches think through their marketing, they'll still be doing the same things that they already do, just better.

And that's definitely not a bad thing.