The Prostitution of the Gospel Through Marketing

A while back I wrote a post called 5 Arguments Against the Use of Media and Marketing in Church (I followed up with a related post about hologram pastors here). Not surprisingly I received some pretty irate feedback from other pastors. But today Eric Seiberling posted a very even-handed response disagreeing with me that is worth reading if you’re interested in this subject. I really appreciate Eric’s thoughtful response. Having said that, Eric and I definitely disagree:

Marketing and media is just another tool.  It changes the dynamics of reach, immediacy and immersion of a message, but it does not change it. The message is the message.

If tools are neutral then he’s right. We can put the gospel on a postcard and all we have to worry about is being faithful to the message. But there are two problems with that. First, tools are not neutral; hammers, televisions, and guns are all engineered for purposes and with technology which prejudice their use. At the very least tools participate in the shaping of their subject in ways that are beyond the control (and sometimes beyond the awareness) of the operator. At worst they dominate to the point of becoming the message and even transforming the operator (yes, like a ring of power!). Personally, I think the degree to which that domination occurs depends on the amount of power the tool facilitates (for example, guns prejudice their own use and shape the character of their operators more powerfully than, say, hammers). There are few tools more powerful these days than media.

But there’s a second problem beyond the prejudice of tools. If you think the gospel is a propositional message meant to lead people to an action (like the sinners prayer) then any delivery system will do – indeed, the more powerful and compelling the “call to action” the better. But the gospel is not merely information to be conveyed, it is a person who must be both proclaimed and demonstrated. And because that person is not physically available to us, the means of proclamation becomes a demonstration of his reality. Hence, there’s simply no way to proclaim the gospel of Christ without personally, locally, and relationally demonstrating him. Marketing seeks to bypass that inefficiency, and in doing so eliminates the presence of Christ from the gospel. Do we really want to personify Christ in the same way that Madison Avenue personifies, say, Oprah Winfrey or Colonel Sanders?

Is it even possible to represent Christ with postcards, television commercials, and propaganda films without irreparable misrepresentation (Ceci n’est pas une Christ? – HT: Chris Nelson)? As far as I know, there is only one ikon that embodies the image of Christ on earth – the Church – and that ikon is so obviously flawed that dressing it up in marketing lipstick just makes her look, to the rest of the world, like a cheap prostitute.

Case in point: is this really an accurate embodiment of Christ?

Or this?

Or, my personal favorite:

Each of these are real examples of church marketing products (mass-mailer postcards) from one of the largest and most successful church marketing companies in the U.S. (yes, there’s profit in this). I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that these postcards distort Christ in ways that range from mildly perplexing to blatantly idolatrous. Especially in the last two, the medium really is the message, and the message is most definitely not the gospel. Moreover, this is not just about the intent of the user or designer (although that clearly is a factor); marketing inherently tends toward expressions of leisure, affluence, and power in the same way that hammers tend toward expressions of blunt force. Otherwise they just don’t work because of the prejudice of their technology and design.

I’ll admit there are many nuances to be explored in this topic, and I do think media can be used by churches in missional and educational ways. Perhaps I’ll explore some thoughts on that in the future, but in the meantime I think my friend Bill Kinnon says it best:

What we win them with, is what we win them to. Win them with entertainment, and you’ve created customers – who expect to be continually entertained.

Picking up our crosses and following Jesus is not particularly attractive. Buying into a worldview where the last are first, and the first are last doesn’t win us any earthly popularity awards – and seems antithetical to the North American Dream.

Death to self. Becoming weak and poor. Identifying with the marginalized. Relinquishing the American Dream. Try putting that on a postcard and see who shows up.

Technorati Tags: Church, Eric Seiberling, Gospel, Jesus Christ, marketing, Media

5 Arguments Against the Use of Marketing and Media in Church

American Evangelicalism has always been media savvy. From Charles Fuller to Billy Graham, mass media has been used for conveying the information of the gospel to multitudes. More recently, we’ve pressed into television, advertising, branding, and multi-media to attract crowds and convey the message. Video-venues (part of the multi-site church approach) are the latest accepted innovation.

Simultaneously, the American church is in a crisis of attendance and character and the missional conversation is partly about rethinking ecclesiology for just that reason. I think this necessitates rethinking our use of modern marketing methods and media technology as well. I have five concerns:

The Tendency Toward Deception:
Advertising is an inherently deceptive medium. Whether we’re producing a T.V. commerical or designing a flyer or video, the purpose is usually persuasion and that plays upon our innate desire to be seen as better than we really are. Rather than check this tendency with open humility, we often go the other direction: creative exaggeration. Brochures, websites and promotional videos portray “shiny happy people” and the promise of easy triumphalism through pixelated filters. This is the peddling of image through desire, just like a typical car commercial or beer ad. The subtle yet powerful message is, “Buy what we’re offering and you can be just like the people in this ad.” But we can never be like the people in those ads because they don’t actually exist.

Emotionally targeted advertising is a poor substitute for having an identity derived from being created in the image of God.

Artificially Exaggerating the Mundane:
One of the most effective means of containing people is to make ordinarily mundane things seem more exciting. On TV and film this is achieved through artificial “technical events” like cutting, panning, fading, adding musical scores, special effects, etc. All this adds the illusion of motion and depth to an otherwise boring experience (television and video stripped of ornamentation are inherently flat and boring).

We do essentially same thing with church services, youth gatherings, and childrens ministries. We build worship music sets and preach messages engineered to produce an emotional crescendo, or use the gimmicky minutia of American teenage culture as accouterments to the scriptural text. This kind of hype creates a false perception of reality and an self-defeating default perspective because we become over-stimulated to the point where the normal level of hype has now become the new mundane. When our old techniques aren’t working anymore we must ramp up to the next decibel.

Hype is a poor substitute for cultivating eyes and ears faith so we can recognize the movement of God in ordinary things.

The Mediation of Experience:
People tend to think they’ve experienced something simply because they saw it on television. Millions of tweens think they know the Jonas Brothers because of the Disney Channel. In my generation we thought we knew Monica and Chandler too.

A weekend outreach may become a life-changing experience for many people. But when we show a video recap of it on Sunday, hundreds or thousands suddenly own the experience. Because they belong to a church that does those kinds of things, they see themselves as participating in that reality. But they’re not. The more technically proficient the media, the more vicarious appropriation occurs and the more people are kept in a stasis where they don’t leave (the root meaning of the word entertainment). This same vicarious mediation can occur with preaching, and is likely to occur when the real people have been replaced by photon-facsimiles in video-venues.

Mediation through technology is a poor substitute for discipleship praxis.

The Trap of Professional Branding:
Being an American consumer requires I maintain an ongoing suspension of dis-belief. Wal-Mart tells me in a thousand ways that they care about my well-being. But they don’t. As a savvy consumer I’m aware of this. It’s an open secret I’ve known since I was 4 years old and my parents taught me to watch TV commercials with suspicion. But even though I know this I suspend my dis-belief while consuming because I want to believe their products will make me happier. I’m willing to try it on the off-chance it’s an accidental truth. This creates an internal dichotomy wherein I love the merchant (if I like their products) and distrust them at the same time. But I go along with the charade as long as they’re the best or the cheapest – or both. This is an ingrained consumer response to ever-escalating marketing efforts.

When churches engage in the same marketing practices we stimulate the same double-minded response. If the marketing materials are good, people are impressed because professionalism is a highly effective selling point; the appearance of competence makes the suspension of dis-belief easier. But what we reap in return is not covenant commitment, it’s brand loyalty. This cripples churches in the long run because it’s only a matter of time before someone else offers a better or cheaper Jesus product. Worse, it debilitates the believer’s capacity for faith because our implied message is that Christianity is just another dubiously-motivated product in the marketplace.

Branding is a poor substitute for genuine spiritual power.

The Deterioration of Kinship Communities:
Mass-communication is inherently fascist-leaning because it atomizes and immobilizes people in order to shape behavior (there’s no need for dictatorship in nations saturated by television). The result is passive consumer-spectators. This same phenomenon occurs in churches that depend on mass media. There’s a reason for this: small communities (families, tribes, etc.) adhere to one another through gifts, mutuality, and affection, and they communicate values and traditions through those resulting kinships. That is the currency of small groups. But among larger populations people can’t maintain a plenitude of kinships. That’s where the mass media and the marketplace enter. The marketplace allows for the mediation of relationships in a large population because cash allows for interaction liberated from relational obligation. Mass media fills the communication gap created by the loss of kinships and, in a feedback loop, supplants them at the same time, driving the population toward the market instead. Hence, the larger the group the more consumer-oriented it must become by necessity, the more it must rely on mass media to create unity, and the more the population will be passivized. In fact, the larger the population, the more it is necessary to create passivity in order to govern. I’m convinced this is a major reason why mega-churches struggle to become genuinely missional.

Mass media and marketplaces are poor substitutions for genuine community.

Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting that media can’t be utilized by the church with integrity. I think it can be, and I have friends who do – but it must be done with tremendous caution keeping these inherent dangers in mind and countering them intentionally. Ultimately, I think the key is to use these media to tell the truth and distribute power – no small task given that these aims are generally opposed by the mediums which distort truth and aggregate power by design. Telling the truth and empowering people through mass media is somewhat akin to making peace with war.

Technorati Tags: Church, Consumerism, Culture, marketing, Media

What We Can (un)Learn From The Apple Tablet

The tech world is currently enraptured by the possibility of a new Apple Tablet computer. Nobody even knows if it’s real or not, but that hasn’t kept the mere hint of it’s impending announcement from bumping Apple’s stock. Even though this as-yet-unannounced slice of personal-computing heaven may be nothing but vaporware, I’m going to suggest few lessons we should (un)learn from it anyway.

So here goes: 5 missional lessons we can (un)learn from the new Apple Tablet: Continue reading…

Technorati Tags: Apple, Church, iPhone, iPod, iSlate, Leadership, Mac, marketing, missional, Missional Church, Tablet

Todd Hunter and the Rebranding of Christianity

There’s a very interesting interview with Todd Hunter posted today at ChristianityToday.com. For those of you who don’t know, Todd was formerly the director of the Vineyard Churches in the U.S., through which I am ordained. Back in the late nineties Todd caught the post-modern bug and that’s when things got interesting. Todd stood up at a Vineyard national pastor’s conference ten years ago in Anaheim and offered his vision for what he thought the Vineyard should become (click here to download, “The Church That I Would Build” by Todd Hunter). In his words, he wanted to build a movement of “Godward, missional, communities.” That conference was a watershed event for me, the beginning of a major transition in my theology, and Todd’s original vision remains a significant source of inspiration for my own journey as a church planter.

If you go back and read between the lines of that vision you’ll discover that Todd essentially predicted the emerging and missional movements (of course, he doesn’t predict Emergent or its demise, that’s something entirely different). Well, the Vineyard didn’t bite, and Todd moved on to get more involved in what would later become the emerging church movement.

Continue reading…

Technorati Tags: character, Church, marketing, missio dei, Psalms, Todd Hunter, training

Unbecoming Buzz Agents For Christ

Back in the day, businesses could count on word-of-mouth as the most powerful form of organic marketing. By doing a genuinely good job, or offering the best quality products, people enthusiastically recommended them to each other. Relationships of trust are natural networks of growth. Roland Allen understood that well.

But the Web 2.0 world (World 2.0?) has spawned new forms of friendship, and new opportunities for word-of-mouth marketing that big businesses are capitalizing on. The infectious power of facebook and Twitter is their instant ability to connect people across traditional barriers, but that very power and success is being capitalized on (annoyingly) in order to increase the sales noise in the midst of those very connections. Connections of grace and reciprocity are corrupted into connections of self-interest and quid-pro-quo. Even more unusually, some people are being enlisted as volunteers – in the thousands – to serve corporate clients by literally creating a “buzz” about products, one person at a time. In return for their willingness to talk to friends and strangers about the products, these “buzz agents” receive products for free.

NPR did a great story on this a while back, and in it there’s a key moment where one particular “buzz agent” talks about wearing a new brand of perfume and then “cozying up” to people throughout her day with the hopes that someone would remark on the scent, thereby creating a “natural” opening for a conversation about the product.

Continue reading…

Technorati Tags: Church, consumer church, marketing, missio dei, mission, News, NPR

How Eddie Gibbs Ruined My Life

Picture me in the year 2002. A blissfully content 30-year-old youth pastor for a delightfully hip little church nestled in an upscale Rocky Mountain resort town. Skiing and snowboarding with affluent teenagers was my job. I highly recommend it.

What I don’t recommend is disturbing your ambitious ministry career with the highly upsetting claims of trouble-makers like Eddie Gibbs. IVP seemed insistent, in those days, on sending me books in the mail and on one of those fateful days of the young millennium they sent me a slyly unassuming book titled, Church Next.

I’m quite sure I was duped into reading it by the tastefully conservative cover art; its throng of crowds promising ministry prosperity to all who thumbed the pages. As if that weren’t enough, early on Mr. Gibbs sprinkled his prose with references to “post-modernism,” an intoxicating topic for young Gen-X pastors longing to make their own profound ecclesiological mark in an Evangelicalism largely dominated by ex Jesus movement hippies who still waxed wild-eyed from time to time about the “Christian communes” and counter-cultural radicalisms of their own youth.

Continue reading…

Technorati Tags: Church, clergy, consumer church, discipleship, Eddie Gibbs, gifts, Gospel, marketing, mission, twoshirts.org

Nobody Wants To Go To Church Anymore

Here’s an interesting post by Christian radio host Brant Hanson on the subject of Church attendance. Apparently, Brant says, nobody wants to go to church anymore.

Well I know I don’t want to go to church anymore, and I’M supposed to be a church-planter. As I said in the comments, since I stopped going to church I’m a better husband, a better father, a better worker, and generally an all-around better follower of Christ.

Technorati Tags: Church, marketing, News

Marketing the Church

Marketing Magic Over Covenant Relationships

We’ve created a rather large marketing machinery and management bureaucracy in order to keep people interested in the goods and services of American consumer faith, and this machinery must be continually expanded in order to maintain momentum.

In the typical attractional church model, more and more resources are poured into facilities, programs, and products that will appeal to faith consumers – and more and more shallow consumers are attracted. At a certain point in this growth curve the deep discipleship of people in the church becomes a logistical impossibility since greater amounts of resources are required to maintain the marketing machinery necessary to continue attracting. Continue reading…

Technorati Tags: consumer church, discipleship, ecclesiology, George Barna, marketing, training, virtue