Getting the good word out

The idea of most church marketing, says Christ United Methodist Church pastor the Rev. Steve Goodier, is not to steal members away from another church, the way Pepsi might try to lure Coke drinkers. Instead, most religious ad campaigns are designed to appeal to that growing demographic known as The Unchurched or the None-of-the-Aboves. This latter designation refers to polls showing that, all over the country, more and more Americans don't align with any particular religion or any religion at all.

That's largely who K2 is targeting, lead pastor Dave Nelson says. "This is for people who might think God is irrelevant" he says about the church's brochure. The message he wants to get across, he says, is that "God is an exciting God who wants to work in people's lives."

While the methods and terminology might be new to religion — demographics, saturation, outreach strategies — "any religion that believes in evangelism at its core believes in marketing," notes the Rev. Dan Webster, spokesman for the Episcopal Diocese of Utah. "If you read the works of Paul, he believed in marketing," the Rev. Webster says about the first-century apostle.

Religious marketing should not be surprising or considered crass, he says. "I don't believe it in any way sullies our message. My gosh, Jesus got down in the dirt, literally. He drew in the dirt to get his message across. We need to be in the marketplace, not absent from it."

The idea is not so much to bring in new members, although that never hurts, but "for people to get to know the love of God," says Christ United Methodist Church pastor Goodier. "Everything else is secondary."

The history of American religions, Wake Forest University religion professor Bill Leonard says, has been full of attempts to "connect with the culture in order to attract members." In a country that believes in religious freedom, "you don't automatically get put in a religious group," Leonard notes. "Even with the Mormons, early on they had to make a case for why their religion is more true than others."

These days The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints uses radio and TV spots that gently, sometimes humorously, stress the importance of family, with just a subtle mention at the end that the LDS Church brought you this message. And, of course, the church relies on thousands of missionaries to spread the word.

In other evangelical religions, Leonard notes, "revivals" have been one way to reach the unaffiliated. Back in the early 20th century, he says, these were often held in burlesque houses and movie theaters, as well as traveling tents. The famous Chicago evangelist D.L. Moody would take a pony cart through the tenements to attract children and their parents.