Marketing the Church

The Argus ran an article this past Sunday about some churches' marketing campaigns to boost attendance as recent studies (one here) suggest that church attendance is down.

I've begun reading Reggie McNeal's new book, Missional Renaissance, which came out in January. Almost anticipating this news, McNeal writes:

"the way forward for churches that want to redefine their position in the community will be through service and sacrifice" (7).

To be fair, the Argus article cites the ad campaigns of the ELCA and the United Methodists, two denominations who have been light years ahead of most evangelical churches when it comes to serving their communitities. But it's interesting that (one of) our response to reports like this is advertising.

• Planting a church? Do a commerical


• Attendance down? Do a provocative sermon series and send postcards to your neighborhood

Full disclosure: Hillcrest has certainly received some share of press the last year or so, and we've done our share of marketing tools in the past to generate interest in our church. But what I've liked is that Hillcrest hasn't intentionally sought out any press. When we've done things, whether it was computers at Cleveland or the recent Jubilee giveaway, we haven't called TV or the newspaper and 'tip' them off. It's funny- I'll run into people who have heard of some of the things we've done and some will say that it was done to make a big splash or to garner attention or press (as in sure you did this good thing for others but in some way it's still about you). Their perception is their perception, but we honestly haven't sought out any attention. Sure, we've been tempted to, but I sometimes think our enteraining of the temptation was so that our community efforts could generate more results on the typical church scorecards- atendance, giving, etc.

Church attendance will probably continue to be a headline worthy article for a few years. But as McNeal and others are arguing, it's the wrong question to be asking.