Truth is ancient; it's grey hairs may make it venerable;
it comes from Him who is the ancient of days. --Thomas Watson

 

5 September, 2005   comments: (0) Today's Pragmatism   Marketing Madness and The "Felt-Need Gospel" Is it just me, or does it seem like a lot of market-driven churches have been really generous lately? No, Im not talking about charity, Im talking about the kind of giving that's designed to "get". Get people in the doors that is. A recent USA Today article entitled "The message: God is cool" reports on one church's marketing campaign that gave away 5,000 frisbees and 3,000 water bottles. The same article also cites another church providing coffee and free access to laptop computers in its Connection Cafe, and another giving away treats from the church's own neighborhood ice cream truck. Here's another church offering free gas for your car, another giving away free U2 concert tickets, free Super Bowl tickets, and another with free chocolate, and last but certainly not least - a free Hummer. In the Ten-Minute Guide to Successfully Marketing Your Church, Tom Cheyney defines marketing as "the human activity by the church directed at satisfying the community's needs and wants through exchange processes". He says that "the point of a marketing outreach plan is to develop services and ministries to attract and to satisfy the needs or wants of individuals in your marketplace". In response to the modern church marketing trend, Gary E. Gilley brings us back to biblical ground: [The focus of Church marketing] is on what the consumer (Unchurched Harry) wants and thinks he needs, rather than on what God wants and what He says Harry needs. In other words, market-driven churches are built upon the foundation of polls, surveys, and the latest marketing techniques, instead of upon the Word of God. In order to market a church to the unsaved, the consumer must be given what he wants. Since unsaved consumers do not desire God, or the things of God, they have to be enticed by something else. Thus, the temptation then arises for a church to change, or at least hide, who they are so that they appeal to Unchurched Harry. Additionally, the church is tempted to alter its message to correspond with what Harry wants to hear and thinks he needs. The end result is a felt-need gospel that appeals to Harry's fallen nature in an effort to entice him to come to Christ, the ultimate felt-need supplier, so that he is fulfilled and feels better about himself. But, "Can churches really hide their identity without losing their religious character? Can the church view people as consumers without inevitably forgetting that they are sinners? Can the church promote the gospel as a product and not forget that those who buy it must repent? Can the church market itself and not forget that it does not belong to itself but to Christ? Can the church pursue success in the market place and not lose its biblical faithfulness". Read the rest of Gary E. Gilley's article entitled . . . "The Market-Driven Church: A Look Behind the Scenes" http://rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Psychology/cgrowth/mkt.htm Posted by: Jim B.   Link: http://www.oldtruth.com/blog.cfm/id.2.pid.42   Be the first to post a comment about this article        Home  |   About  |  Videos   |  Calvinism