I am familiar with most of the dialogue and debate out there about whether the church should be marketing itself, which leads to the premise of my book:

There are over 100 million people in America that place no value on church.
They don’t see it as an option, because it has no value in their lives.
It is not a viable solution to their problems, nor do they see it as an avenue to success in their lives.
If they did, a lot more people would attend church.

I believe that Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life; but as an American living in America I am bombarded with secular media, marketing, and advertising. Nearly 1,700 images hit me (and you) daily. Thousands of companies want our buying power—from basic commodities to a new car. It’s amazing! So the church has become an inconspicuous option? What are Christians supposed to do? Luke 14:23 says:

“And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.” KJV

Is this scripture comparable to the word marketing? Or is marketing a twentieth century word for evangelism? I don’t know; but I do know that if we don’t get in the game we will never be a player. I do know evangelism is the process of spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ. We have the most important, most excellent message of good news in history, and it is possible for us to come out of obscurity and deliver it with excellence.
According to Mark 16:15-16: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” The Bible doesn’t say extensively how we should preach it or communicate it, but I think it’s pretty easy to connect the dots.
The Bible also doesn’t mention sociology, anthropology, psychology, paleontology, or economics by name but it has inspired countless volumes of commentary and insight into these academic disciplines. Could it be that marketing also developed over time from principles of communication we find in the Bible?
People and relationships are two important aspects in the life of ministries. Getting people saved—fulfilling the Great Commission—is the most important thing. People need to come to the saving knowledge of Christ, even if it occurs because of a flyer, the internet, or a radio or television advertisement.
People in today’s culture make instant decisions based on the quality of the product or service being distributed—by the quality of the marketing that propels them to take action. Whether people come to know Jesus by a personal invitation or a TV spot is irrelevant, as long as they come.
In the 1960’s there were over 600 impressions a day that an average American was hit with, when I completed my book research indicated that we were up to 1700 impressions per day, experts are now predicting that by 2010 we will be upto 5,000 impression per day.
Marketing the Church is a combination of knowing your target demographic the gospel, the ministries vision, and coming up with prayed over spirit filled message that can touch your community. Once you have this consistent message, theme or brand together its time to implement it across all deliverables. Ie your website, video, bulletin, invite cards, email etc. Now its time take this consistent message into the community, with the intent of letting them know that you exist and are an option in the market place. The more impressions you can make over a short period of time will increase your effectiveness.

Thus, Sending out your youth pastor to hand out invite cards is not marketing.

So here we go, what is the correct answer? Do you build the brand off of the Pastor, Church Building or the Mission of the Church. I wish I could give you a down and dirty answer to the question. However the answer has so many variables to be able to give a direct answer. Here are some things to consider

1) Don’t do this yourself, outsourcing is great option or build a team
2) Your decision making should have the end result in mind
3) Understand your core demographic
4) Understand who the Pastor thinks their core demographic is?
5) Know the The Church mission
6) Know the Pastors Vision
7) Nail down a date to have an answer
8) This is a big decision… Treat it it that way
9) This decision can’t be avoided, you are spinning your wheels and creating indecisiveness in your marketing team if you don’t make decision.

I would like to challenge everyone who is reading to please get involved

Fairness doctrine and hate crimes speech has been held up or blocked by conservative Christians who are called to serve in Washington. Groups like the NRB, Capital Ministries, ADF and others have fought for conservative values. I would encourage you and everyone who has been commented to get involved with your local politics or congressman or woman, to find out more about the details o f thes heavily weighted legislative items that are getting ready to pass now that our political landscape will be heavily liberal.Our voice has been not been squelched but our legislative power has.

I am personally not an alarmist or a futurist. This past year I had the fortunate opportunity to sit on the NRB Presidents Council, in those meetings we were briefed by the congressmen, senators and FCC commissioners on issues like Fairness Doctrine and Hate crimes speech.

Please do the research your self and get involved. I am here to tell you and anyone else who is reading this that the Christian broadcast landscape in going to significantly change in the next 12-18 months.

I love the lord and will be praying this doesn’t happen. 1 Tim 2:1-3

So here we go, what is the correct answer? Do you build the brand off of the Pastor, Church Building or the Mission of the Church. I wish I could give you a down and dirty answer to the question. However the answer has so many variables to be able to give a direct answer. Here are some things to consider

1) Don’t do this yourself, outsourcing is great option or build a team
2) Your decision making should have the end result in mind
3) Understand your core demographic
4) Understand who the Pastor thinks their core demographic is?
5) Know the The Church mission
6) Know the Pastors Vision
7) Nail down a date to have an answer
8) This is a big decision… Treat it it that way
9) This decision can’t be avoided, you are spinning your wheels and creating indecisiveness in your marketing team if you don’t make decision.

Recently I have had many branding conversations with Senior Pastors, Apostles, Bishops and ministry leaders. The branding process takes time, strategy and is subject to the mission and vision variables. Getting your branding element right, is extremely crucial to the ministries success, all of your current deliverables (Video, website, bulletins, commercials, promos) are hanging off of what the designer or video editors believes to be attracting people to the church or ministry. More times than not, the executive team has not had a branding conversation or know who they are attempting to attract to the ministry. There are usually, two basic elements to your brand. One, who are you? Two, who does your audience think you are? There are other variables that go into the brand and there is a strategic process to uncovering your brand. However if you want to use staff members to go through this process then start with the above questions and ask the Holy Spirit for guidance.

So, who is in the drivers seat when making design and production decisions, the designer?