11.08.08
Church Marketing? What If…
This is a follow up to my posting on Communications. I’ve been intrigued at the concept of church marketing. And - I’ve been thinking about how we do it (or the lack thereof). I guess first things first - I’m part of the problem and part of the solution. Our mindset in many church environments is one of letting the paid staff do the work of ministry. That work, while including spreading the gospel (’isn’t that what we pay the pastor for?’), ministering to those in need, etc. seems to always be something staff should do. It is why they make the big bucks!
I’m thinking….NOT! I don’t want our staff to be the creative or end product of our efforts to market! It would be like asking them to be graphics artists - and the last experience they had with art was either doodling on a church bulletin (or in a hymnal if you’re old enough to remember them…) during a boring service or creating their paint-by-numbers masterpiece as a youth. What madness!
But God has given us diversity and talent, and I have no doubt that many in our body can be very creative in marketing. Please keep in mind I am talking marketing as in branding - putting what we, as the Body of Christ, are about in our fellowship. I’m not trying to ’sell’ anything - but what is our identity? And how do we portray it to others?
In that spirit, I ask for 5 minutes. You may laugh really hard at this. You may not…hard to tell on the web. I see this is a great portrayal of church marketing, in something most of us can relate to.
So…marketing…what do we do in this area? What can we do better? When can we get started? I’m excited about the potential marketing has for us - and some of these concepts, coupled with what is going on with the Church Health team and other areas, perhaps the time is right to review a vision statement, a mission statement (for those more traditional ‘things’ we do), and then look at placing that in an identity (meaning something that reflects it in a minimalistic way, logos, slogans, etc. - like Nike’s swoosh or Intel’s trademark sound). Why not leave your comments here - I’m interested in hearing what you think (I’m positive not everyone agrees we should even mention marketing and the church in the same breath!).
