Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

This morning, I came across the web site of an organization that specializes in creating marketing campaigns for churches. They call themselves: Church Marketing Sucks. That name leaves me wondering whether this company understands its niche. Expert marketers, huh?

“Church Marketing Sucks exists to frustrate, educate and motivate the church to communicate, with uncompromising clarity, the truth of Jesus Christ. Started in 2004, Church Marketing Sucks is a part of the Center for Church Communication, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping the church matter.”

Helping the church matter? First of all, where is this church – THE church? I thought there were churches all over the place. Secondly, why does a church need a bunch of marketers to help it matter? That doesn’t speak too highly of that church, does it?

This whole silliness promoted by Church Marketing Sucks begs a bigger question: Why do churches need marketing at all?

They claim to have the divine, immortal, all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present, super benevolent creator of the entire universe on their side. They claim to be able to give people true happiness and salvation. They claim to give eternal life.

Well, if all that’s true, why do churches need marketing campaigns?

Church Marketing Sucks says, “We’ve got the greatest story ever told, but no one’s listening.”

Maybe it’s time to consider that churches do not have the greatest story ever told. Maybe, it’s just a good story among a lot of other good stories. Maybe the only reason that Christianity was able to dominate Europe during the Dark Ages is that people didn’t have printing presses so that they could find any other book to read.

Besides that, even if you do have the greatest story ever told, but you tell it over and over and over and over again, week after week for almost two thousand years, it gets boring, doesn’t it?

Maybe what churches need is not a new marketing campaign. Maybe it’s time for churches to get a new messiah, to stand alongside Jesus, so that they can have another story to tell when the first one gets old.