Wednesday, February 25, 2009
That's What Happens
Rachel Motte, writing at Evangelical Outpost express concern that:
The bottom line here is far more simple than that. When you "market your brand" you are going to get branded results. We have over the last couple of decades "marketed" church. Mega-churches stand as markers to the success of that approach. Or do they?
The tools we have for marketing products in our world fall into two broad categories, ones that create a market - particularly for a product no one really needs and ones that grab a larger portion of market share when demand is flat and the product commodified.
The first type of marketing is the kind of marketing that sells the latest electronic widget. Take for example the newly updated Kindle 2. More than just a fancy way to read a book, this is a newer, fancier way to read a book when our household does not use all the fanciness on the Kindle it currently owns. What reason is there to buy this thing, particularly when I just bought my last one 4 months ago? Marketing is that which makes me want to buy the improved, but more-or-less useless. In this case, marketing creates demand where need does not exist.
Well, need for church is very real, and this type of marketing of the church makes it appear less than such.
The second kind of marketing applies to something like milk. Absent population growth, demand for milk is pretty static. Not to mention the fact that given the high levels of government regulation over how and the quality of milk that gets to market, it is all pretty much the same stuff, regardless of what dairy it comes from. But if I own dairy X and what to sell more than dairy Y - how do I get that job done. Well, if I can make and thus sell my milk cheaper than dairy Y I can probably capture more market, but in a business like milk, the production technology is almost as mature as the product - such innovations are extremely hard to come by.
But I can turn to marketing. Such a marketing campaign will create the impression that my milk is somehow distinct and better that dairy Y's milk. My cows will appear in commercials telling you what a wonderful cow-keeper I am and how happy they are making milk for me, implying that the guy that owns dairy Y is a schlub that treats his cows poorly. You'll buy my milk because my cows are happy.
This is largely the kind of marketing the church has turned to. Thus mega-churches are taking away membership from smaller local congregations. The resemblance to Wal-Mart moving in and pushing out all the local retailers is uncanny.
But the real problem with this is that it presumes church is a commodity in a demand flat market. Folks, unless the whole world is Christian, demand is anything but flat. Not to mention the fact that churches are distinctive one from the other. The distinctives are not necessarily doctrinal. We do faith a disservice when we reduce it to doctrine. Differences in churches lie are also liturgical, in polity, in architecture, in atmosphere.... And these things are all important.
When we reduce Christian distinctiveness to doctrine only we reduce Christianity to doctrine only. Hardly a faith that transforms lives.
But the bottom line is this - when we treat something like a commodity, it will becomes a commodity. We have treated faith labels like brands - why are we surprised the public treats them that way too?
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a large number of Christians are no more loyal to their own denomination than they are to their favorite brand of toothpaste.As her counter argument she offers a quote from a guy that keep going on about "doctrinal distinctives." Folks, the problem here is not doctrine. If you think about it, there is only one true doctrine - all of them are wrong somewhere. Real ecumenism should eventually result in that one true doctrine.
The bottom line here is far more simple than that. When you "market your brand" you are going to get branded results. We have over the last couple of decades "marketed" church. Mega-churches stand as markers to the success of that approach. Or do they?
The tools we have for marketing products in our world fall into two broad categories, ones that create a market - particularly for a product no one really needs and ones that grab a larger portion of market share when demand is flat and the product commodified.
The first type of marketing is the kind of marketing that sells the latest electronic widget. Take for example the newly updated Kindle 2. More than just a fancy way to read a book, this is a newer, fancier way to read a book when our household does not use all the fanciness on the Kindle it currently owns. What reason is there to buy this thing, particularly when I just bought my last one 4 months ago? Marketing is that which makes me want to buy the improved, but more-or-less useless. In this case, marketing creates demand where need does not exist.
Well, need for church is very real, and this type of marketing of the church makes it appear less than such.
The second kind of marketing applies to something like milk. Absent population growth, demand for milk is pretty static. Not to mention the fact that given the high levels of government regulation over how and the quality of milk that gets to market, it is all pretty much the same stuff, regardless of what dairy it comes from. But if I own dairy X and what to sell more than dairy Y - how do I get that job done. Well, if I can make and thus sell my milk cheaper than dairy Y I can probably capture more market, but in a business like milk, the production technology is almost as mature as the product - such innovations are extremely hard to come by.
But I can turn to marketing. Such a marketing campaign will create the impression that my milk is somehow distinct and better that dairy Y's milk. My cows will appear in commercials telling you what a wonderful cow-keeper I am and how happy they are making milk for me, implying that the guy that owns dairy Y is a schlub that treats his cows poorly. You'll buy my milk because my cows are happy.
This is largely the kind of marketing the church has turned to. Thus mega-churches are taking away membership from smaller local congregations. The resemblance to Wal-Mart moving in and pushing out all the local retailers is uncanny.
But the real problem with this is that it presumes church is a commodity in a demand flat market. Folks, unless the whole world is Christian, demand is anything but flat. Not to mention the fact that churches are distinctive one from the other. The distinctives are not necessarily doctrinal. We do faith a disservice when we reduce it to doctrine. Differences in churches lie are also liturgical, in polity, in architecture, in atmosphere.... And these things are all important.
When we reduce Christian distinctiveness to doctrine only we reduce Christianity to doctrine only. Hardly a faith that transforms lives.
But the bottom line is this - when we treat something like a commodity, it will becomes a commodity. We have treated faith labels like brands - why are we surprised the public treats them that way too?
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