Marketing an Easy Faith

Mic Duncan at a recent dinner concluded on his given topic about the future of the Church, that the future lies not in recruiting new believers, but in evangelising its own.

At the risk of being terribly harsh and hypocritical, I agree that New Zealand churches really are full of ‘half believers’; of those that have prayed the prayer, made it in the door, but, well to be frank, very little else. Nothing that looks like the vibrant reality of the life Christ was a proponent of. Churches instead are often preoccupied with numbers; numbers of bums on pews, giving numbers, new believer numbers, numbers through programs. And many Christians seem to think that praying the prayer and making it in the door and through a program or two is enough. Yes we know that faith without works is dead, but works are hard to quantify. Apathy, disconnection, disobedience, what do they really look like? Sure it’s easy enough to impeach a minister for having an affair, sex is easy enough to slot into the disobedience, lack of integrity, just plain wrong categories, but a lack of interest in God, failure to care for those around you, secret pride, apathy about justice – it’s often hard to tell. Faith without works often still looks like faith through the limited lens of Sunday services.

Imagine the impact of the Church if its members lived up to the call of Christ. Or even just tried really.

As I write this I think about a recent Canvas article talking about the rebranding of Christianity and the marketing machine that is so many mega churches. The article talked about the lengths some New Zealand churches are going to, to ‘recruit’ churchgoers, creating marketing machines, with celebrity bands, sound engineers and full time designers, slick dance and production, online media and big name speakers. I can’t help but wonder about a correlation between the ‘half believers’ in pews and the marketing hype of modern Christianity.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the marketing per se I have a problem with. I love Godmarks billboards (you know, the black and white “I don’t mind if you yell at me, at least we’re talking” types), I do – I often sit in traffic and start talking honestly to God after seeing one of their billboards. And I have numerous friends who have come to faith through a mega church marketing ploy, who never would have darkened the door of a small, quieter community church.

I do have a problem with the marketing selling the church and the people, but not Christ, with hype that doesn’t seem to end and the core of the gospel take over as the focus. I have a problem with marketing that glosses over the core bits of Christianity like sacrifice and obedience and instead promotes prosperity and happiness. And I have a problem with marketing that doesn’t deal with the hard questions of life, like the mother diagnosed with terminal cancer, or someone who just lost their job with a mortgage and five kids to support.

I know churches don’t intend to market to the exclusion of any of the above. I attended a marketing mega church for five years. And all of the staff would be horrified to think that they may be doing so to the exclusion of the things above - they intend to present the gospel, to connect, to be real. But they also seek to market the gospel, to make it fun, more palatable, to make it exciting. And in that tension I think it’s hard to not push out key elements of the gospel that don’t gel with the marketing direction.

The Canvas writer asks “But even if churches attract new flocks, what will happen if the PR power runs out?”. And it does, it loses its power over people eventually, for some earlier than others. Of my friends who came to faith in the mega churches, all of them left when the road got bumpy or the façade didn’t seem real or they failed to connect. Their new glossy faiths didn’t equip them to deal with crisis. For some it was months, others years. Some went to smaller less flashy churches, others left altogether.

Yes in the mega church they could connect in small groups or different programs with people who could answer their questions, but the problem is that big, loud, uber marketed churches aren’t usually conducive to environments to connect in, and a continuous stream of positive messages often deters people from asking questions and opening up about honest struggles. It’s hard to market Christianity and at the same time preach on the theologically difficult and emotive subject of the problem of pain. I respected what the leaders of my mega church were doing, but in the end I had to conclude that the marketing and the hype distracted me from (and the Church from having the energy to focus on) really growing in what it meant to be a follower of Christ in day to day reality.

At my mega church, as long as I attended three services a week, a small group and was on ushering every month, I was doing great. No matter that I had no time for non-Christian friends or hobbies or time alone. Numbers and programs and attendance became the hallmarks of how I was doing as a Christian, because it’s just too hard to monitor it another way in a Church that size. And consequently I was never really challenged to leave that place of ‘half believership’, to delve deep into what it means to follow Christ.

And while most churches don’t (or maybe more accurately, can’t) go to such lengths, how many spend inordinate numbers of volunteer hours on producing slick worship shows and building bigger and better buildings and the altar call gets tinted to focus on a Christ that will meet all your expectations and more? I know that most churches I’ve attended have ‘marketed’ in that sense – but are we really looking at what the cost is for these marketing campaigns, what we are excluding and what sort of foundation we create for the people who respond and those already in our pews?