Liberal mainline Protestants are shrinking in number, even though one would think that their moral permissiveness and leftwing political activism would make them fashionable again. So these denominations are turning to advertising:
Shrinking mainline Protestant denominations are turning to marketing to help stem decades of membership losses and stay afloat.
The United Methodist Church recently released a $20 million rebranding effort aimed at attracting younger members to the large but diminishing Protestant sect. The new ads will appear over the next four years as part of the denomination’s “Rethink Church” campaign.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has invested nearly $1.2 million in the past two years launching a similar branding effort based on the theme “God’s Work, Our Hands.”
The denominations are trying to bounce back from losses that began in the mid-1960s.
From 1990 to 2008 alone, mainline Protestants dropped from 18.7 percent to 12.9 percent of the population, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.
The United Methodist Church has just under 8 million members in the U.S., with about 3.5 million additional adherents overseas. The median age for a United Methodist is 57, according to the Rev. Larry Hollon, the denomination’s chief communications executive.
The new ads highlight the opportunities for involvement within Methodist churches – from helping feed the poor to volunteering with youth basketball leagues in low-income neighborhoods, reflecting research that found that young people are especially interested in service projects.
“We need to refocus on young people and provide them an opportunity to be a part of the church,” Mr. Hollon said. “What we’re hearing is, they say, ‘Belief connects to how I live my daily life.’ If I say, ‘I value people because I’m a religious person,’ then I have to demonstrate that in concrete ways. It’s walking the walk, not just talking the talk.”
One of the 30-second ads, posted at www.10thousanddoors.org, asks, “What if church wasn’t just a building, but thousands of doors, each of them opening up to a journey that could actually change the world? Would you come?”
Another ad shows children reading books and asks, “What if church was a literacy program for homeless children? Would you come?”
Scott Hendrickson, a marketing director for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which has about 4.7 million members, said his denomination’s marketing isn’t targeted to new members but current ones. The ads, at www.elca.org/tvads, have run on cable-TV channels and in other media outlets that serve large populations of Lutherans.
Like the Methodists’ ads, they feature church members helping others. One shows a Senegal Lutheran mission teaching women how to start their own businesses.
“Through [current members] they will encourage others to come join the church,” Mr. Hendrickson said. “We wanted to reach the current members to communicate … what we do, what our mission is.”
What their mission is! Notice that these churches are marketing nothing more than feel-good self-righteousness, especially social righteousness, rather than the more painful personal kind of righteousness. But when it comes right down to it, they are just as fixated on works righteousness as the most legalistic fundamentalist. While decrying the political activism of the Christian right, the Christian left is even more fixated on political activism. (I grew up in this kind of church. I remember attending conventions in which the delegates voted on foreign and domestic policy issues and pretended to be Congress.) I am all for works of mercy, including Sengalese literacy projects and the like. But how sad that the “mission” of these churches has nothing to do with grace, salvation, or Christ, who apparently is not even mentioned in these ads.
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Yet I wonder how fast Missouri can catch up. Our leadership seems to look to everything but the word of God to fix our woes. Unless it is to quote Malachi to the people about paying tithes.
The church stands or falls on the Gospel, article 4. If the Synodical leadership sees us falling, it might be a good indication that we are losing the Gospel.
But hey, “I’m no theologian,” or anything.
I’ve been reading Eusebius lately, I am dumbfounded at what we can learn from guys who weren’t ashamed to be theologians. The way they handled problems, and engaged the culture to get converts is truly amazing.
Vieth, it’s not just the mainliners, though I notice your article deals only with one denomination. But I’m in the shrinking conservative WELS (Wisconsin synod), and it’s advertising also. Our church runs TV ads in which one of the pastors and his wife pretend to be welcoming friends over dinner. It’s supposed to stress how friendly we can act, I guess.
Sorry, I have absolutely nothing worthwhile to contribute here but…
After spending too many hours watching Pitchmen I’m pretty sure Billy Mayes could sell the ELCA, United Methodists, etc. to America in 2 minutes or less and for only 19.99. Who needs to spend millions on why you should “Rethink Church” when you got Billy Mayes?
But wait, there’s more! Along with church membership you also get feel-good spirituality for free!
Sigh. I’ll go back to being extremely quiet now.
I have to go with Welsman – as an LCMS member we are conservative mainline and shrinking. I cringe to see headlines about how the “liberal” mainline shrink when it is hitting all mainlines. (Liberal churches do seem to shrink faster)
Ryan,
And we have had T.V. Ads for a long time. But in their defense at least the one Ad that I saw for LCMS Churches was very gospel focused. I don’t know if we are still doing it or not.
i’m not sure that a certain amount of advertising is bad. But I think it is weak when it refers someone to the LCMS website in order to find the local congregation. Especially given that finding an LCMS congregation that actually preaches the Gospel can be a crap shoot at best in parts of this country.
It is also weak if it emphasizes anything but the Gospel.
There may be though, also a question of integrity when we advertise because advertising is hardly noted for integrity.
Leif:
I actually would go with the Shamwow guy. Anyway, I think that without the gospel preaching and letting men know their need for the Saviour, these mainline churches are no more effective that a congregation of loyal water buffalo.
Efrem:
Too true and by that I mean the Shamwow guy is by far more edgy and hip with the kids! I can see it now: Shamwow guy (now ELCA guy) declaring that “I don’t know, it sells itself!”. He may, however, have a hard time with reconciling his past statement of, “It’s made in Germany. You know the Germans always make good stuff” with his newer endorsement of a Scandinavian based spin off but I digress.
Ad campaigns work great if you’re trying to boost the number of people who drink Coke vs Pepsi or who want to vote for Democrats vs Republicans. Run the ad and try to win some votes or drinkers or hearts or whatever. But winning someone solely for your church attendance sheet based off making people “feel good” is just sorta sad.
And, ultimately, it promotes a bizarre fashion of relativism that is ridiculous at best. Ignore for the moment any church membership decision based off of silly things like “doctrine” and “beliefs” and truly search your heart for which church “offers the best reading program” or “allows for the most volunteer opportunities”.
If this is their argument for joining up with a church why bother? I can learn to read at school, help sponsor a program that teaches literacy to folks around the world, or I can volunteer and do it myself. Why go to church (ie. the apparent middle man in this picture) to do it? Or moving along to the “help others in general” ads. Again, why go to church to do it? If these ads are to the effect that I take them to be “church” has become a useless middle man trying to justify his job before the boss realizes that they’re just wasting corporate resources.
There is nothing about these messages that would tell me (if I was a “seeker”) that I should actually exert myself and sign up with them. There’s no conviction, no hope, no grace, no nothing except a message of “possibly helping people indirectly through a third party which would probably have me take a class to become a member of something that I may not fully believe anyways but it doesn’t matter because they’ll accept me for who I am”.
And perhaps I’m being really selfish in redirecting what may be a decent concept into one of senseless vanity but that’s also the cynicism that comes from years of being sold the Shamwow and told that it’s gold.
While we denigrate TV ads, what about websites? Every church, it seems, has a website that does much more than merely list service times and include a doctrinal statement. Many that I’ve seen are more like commercials.
Welsman:
My ideal church website, in theory, could connect members and provide a nice list of upcoming events, beliefs, possibly a sermon download, etc. And I think this is even more important for youth, etc. for which technology is akin to their right hand (not that I’m saying local church, Illinois should set up a MySpace page and/or site but the idea that there should be something to connect people does “seem” desirable).
This is, of course, the ideal. And like all ideals, there is this thing called reality in the way of it.
Speaking from my experiences I feel that there is a tremendous amount of good that a website can do and I can’t tell you how much time I’ve spent reading the Book of Concord online or browsing through articles on other LCMS sites (blogs!), etc. But, then again, that isn’t necessarily church specific in terms of I didn’t google “local church, Illinois” and then read their doctrine for hours and why “we’re not like the others man!”. Which then plays into exactly what you’re talking about.
Perhaps then, being terse is the best practice. To get corny: “nothing but the facts”
I don’t think it is necessarily wrong to use the medium of advertising (including websites) to advertise a church or denomination. For example, a newspaper ad making the community aware of an Easter sunrise service, or a Yellow pages ad for a local church. Similarly, a church website which provide information about the church to both congregants and potential visitors is a good thing. The key is the providing of useful information about your church or denomination. As far as TV ads are concerned, I would guess they are not “per se” wrong, but there could be a stewardship issue, given their ephemeral nature and high cost.
On the other hand, what these liberal mainline churches are doing is substituting advertising for the work of the Holy Spirit. They are using the advertisements not to convey specific and useful information about the church (service times, statement of faith, outreach ministries, etc.), but rather in an attempt to draw people in through an emotional appeal. I guess when you’ve emasculated the power of the Holy Spirit through your apostacy, advertising is all you’ve got left.
The problem, in my opinion, is not advertising. The problem is what they are advertising and what they are appealing to, with no mention of Christ.
I respectfully disagree. The problem, in my opinion, is advertising. Marketing church is conforming to the world, not the word of God, something St. Paul cautioned against.
Jim, your comment just hit me as what I think to be the biggest problem with all of this–the difference between “advertising” and “marketing”. I think we’ve slipped into using both terms willy-nilly as equals but they can mean vastly different things when we’re talking about them.
In short, marketing seems to be the problem and not advertising per se.
Advertising a potluck or putting your service dates/hours in the local newspaper, IMO, is in no way something that could be harmful since it’s a “just the facts” sort of thing. However, marketing your church as someplace to go to when you’re tired of “Church” (I’ve seen bizarre church ads stating that they were the “anti-church” around my town, hence my example) is something completely out of line and has reduced your “just the facts” to a ploy to attract people and further the agenda.
Also the line becomes a little clearer at this point. If you see “St. Paul LCMS Sunday Services at 8:15, 10, 11:35″ or “St. Peter’s is having a garage sale on Wednesday…proceeds to help fund youth camp” these are advertisements for the church but at the same time they are also announcements for anyone within the community to come to and enjoy. Otherwise, there’s not much of a point to having a church service or garage sale or anything else if you don’t tell anyone that you’re going to be having one.
But when you hear “tired of church?” or “Learn how to have great sex, at church! (crazy I know!)”, etc. these messages are purposely created to lure someone in and have little to do with actually teaching someone anything about Christ or salvation or much of anything. Nor are they informative of a church function, service time, or anything else. In short, they’re meant to provoke a response and get a result–mostly in the form of increased attendance.