Is “marketing” a dirty word for the Church?

For many church leaders, “marketing” becomes a dirty word when applied to ministry. After all, we associate it with the marketplace – the buying and selling of goods, profits, the money-changers at the temple. Marketing is for commerce and business, not charitable work and the salvation of souls, right?

It’s easy to understand why many church leaders don’t want to do “church marketing.” The Church is not a business out to make a profit nor sell its services. Adding to the distaste, many of the common marketing practices today are manipulative, impersonal, self-interested, and immoral. They are incompatible with the Christian life.

But good marketing – marketing done right – indeed applies very powerfully to the work of the Church. After all, the work of the Church requires us to engage in the marketplace (of ideas and otherwise). And most importantly, it means sharing something of great value with people who desperately need it (but don’t know about it yet) people who are overwhelmed by noise and the endless interests competing for their attention.

That’s marketing: figuring out how to communicate the value of something we have to offer. Not only is it essential to our mission, but, quite frankly, it’s something the Church hasn’t done so well at it in recent decades.

We need help communicating the Truth to this culture and in this climate. We need help convincing people of the value of our communities, events and programs. We need help breaking through the noise out there. We need help presenting our ideas so that they catch fire, rather than fizzle out. This is precisely what good marketers do.

Marketing is how we tell our story in a compelling way. Sadly, most churches are not telling their stories very well. They are doing amazing, inspiring, life-changing things, but not enough people know about them. We are still struggling to communicate the great value of what we have to offer.

Whether you want to call it “church marketing” or not, the Church can certainly learn a lot from good marketers. And it’s up to church leaders everywhere, who understand the needs of the Church, to become proficient in marketing best-practices in order to apply them appropriately and successfully to the important work of the Church.