Marketing or Ministry?
Something happened this week that got me thinking about marketing and ministry.
We produced this video at our church to celebrate our Children's Ministry and to support an effort recruiting new volunteers. The response was telling. Generally, the most driven and capable people in leadership were critical of the video. Conversely, those who aren't high-profile, high-capacity people were the most complimentary of it. In short, the video stimulated a curiously polarized reaction.
I began to wonder what might be the reason for the split. It occurred to me that high-capacity, results-oriented leaders are generally more attuned to the finer points of marketing, appreciating its effectiveness at helping them achieve their goals. These folks were much more alert to the problems with this piece—and there are problems which I'd be hard pressed to defend from the perspective of marketing. On the other hand, the humble person in the pew with no such aspirations may actually be more attuned to ministry. These were the ones who looked past the marketing and connected with the ministry presented.
My speculation sets up an interesting set of questions. What is the relationship between marketing and ministry? Is it mutually supportive, or even compatible? How do our attitudes towards marketing, or most precisely our confidence in it, shape our view of ministry? Before we examine these questions, let me say that I think Jesus was a lousy marketer—and thank God he was.
Marketing is about connecting products or services with a targeted consumer in such a way that the consumer desires those products or services more than competitive offerings. Marketers use disciplines like branding, design, advertising, public relations, and product demonstrations to create those connections and, in most cases, even the desire. No one ever came out of the womb wanting an iPhone. Marketing's ministry proponents would probably contend that marketing is morally neutral. If you're marketing something good, then the act itself is good. So why is marketing noticeable set aside in the gospels?
I believe Jesus didn't do marketing as I've defined it. In fact, he employed what I'll call anti-marketing. In John 6 for example, when he had the crowds at the point where they wanted to make him king, he said things that disgusted them. He told them, in effect, that the desires his "product demo" had stimulated in them were not what he had come to satisfy. Instead of bread to eat, he offered them himself. In the most intimate and shocking terms, and he claimed that if they were rightly related to God, then what he offered would be the very thing they most desired. Most of those who heard him then left grumbling (Perhaps to look for another messianic figure who made better use of marketing). They were disillusioned by the obvious chasm between what they wanted—what they believed he would give them—and what he actually offered.
Jesus questioned the humble few who remained—those he had chosen—asking if they were going to leave too. In reply, they asked him to whom they would go since it was he who had the words of eternal life. They weren't dissuaded from following him by the effect his anti-marketing had on the crowds. They were attracted by his offer of himself. They had experienced his ministry intimately, and ultimately it would be their self-effacing word of their testimony (Acts 3:12, 4:13, 1 Corinthians 1:17, 26-31) that would attract others after He had commissioned them to go and make disciples (Matthew 28:18-20).
The incident in John 6 is more illustrative than isolated. Consider the parable of the sowers as training for ministry. When Jesus explains it to his disciples, he is preparing them for the relatively small numbers who will genuinely (fruitfully) respond to their preaching. If he were marketing the gospel, he would more likely offer them training designed to maximize the numeric response. Furthermore, in Mark's gospel (1:38 and 43) Jesus is compelled to be more covert by the numeric response to spectacular displays of his power in order that he might preach.
I think the reason Jesus didn't employ the equivalent of modern marketing is because the discipline is specifically designed to stimulate consumerist individualism, something that is ultimately at odds with his kingdom. Returning then to some of the original questions posed above, I'd have to say that there are fundamental incompatibilities between marketing and ministry. Furthermore, a negative view of marketing as a communications tool will have a profound impact on how one ministers the gospel.
More on that in a follow-up post...
Comments
What your post stirred me to think about was how Simon might have responded to it. Simon in Luke 7. He's the guy who refused to wash Christ's feet when the Son of God came for dinner, a common courtesy; nor did he offer the other normal courtesy, a kiss of welcome. I think he may have been a quality control specialist, and Jesus wasn't quite up to his standards.
And he probably would have been much too busy to work with the children himself.
But I think the disreputable woman in Luke 7 who was washing Jesus feet with her tears, wiping them with her hair, and pouring her professional trade perfume on him ... well, she might have some doubts about whether she would be welcome in most churches, let alone be allowed to minister. The video would have called her heart to come and make a difference, even as Jesus made a difference for her.
The video answers the key question for the proper audience.
I just spent a weekend with a small group of people, a church. They are trying to reconcile their existence as a church with the evangelical church models of which they are familiar. You see, they are meeting together weekly in a home for prayer, worship and sharing of the Word. Their pastor left a couple of month's back. Currently, they don't have a worship team or a building or a trained, licensed pastor, so they think they can no longer continue as a church. They have been asking denominational leadership for a pastor to be assigned to them so they can move forward with legitimacy.
It struck me as I met with them that the Holy Spirit has already sealed them with legitimacy. The struggle they are having is with institutional approval, which they presume to be something that is other than what they have. Yet they are operating as churches operated for most of he early history of the church.
As I have traveled around the world I've seen more forms of church fellowship than I imagined. And they all seem to work (at the same time, they are all quick to point out how they don't work, as well). It amazes me to see how non-conformist God can be in the way He is growing His church. He inhabits communities with love and fellowship and presence that satisfies the believers' desires to move through life together - and it seems that the larger tension for these out-of-the-box communities is whether or not they look enough like "those guys doing it right over there."
Just prior to Jesus' marketing fumble in John 6 a young boy came forward with a solution to the crowd's hunger. This was laughably naive of the lad - there had to be a better plan than this. But we serve a God who multiplies what we are lacking.
I pray that highly-driven leaders would fly a bit lower and get closer to the people they are privileged to serve - get to know what is at work in them. They might not have missed the beautiful simplicity of transformed people telling of what God has stirred in them and the joy they now know in serving.