pat loughery

One thing that’s bouncing around my brain this week that I thought might make good fodder for discussion on this site: How should a church market itself in the community?

What do I mean? Well, as a wise sage once beat into my brain, “All meaning is context dependant.” So here’s our context.

This weekend is Alpine Days, the big festival in North Bend. You know, parades, bands, booths selling everything you can think of.

Several of the churches use the opportunity to introduce themselves to the community. Many of them put together a float in the parade. The local recovery ministry sets up a booth and sells water bottles. Some do kids face painting, etc. My friend who’s planting the AG church up the street is going all-out with several of these kinds of things.

Us? We have a couple of big coolers, two little red wagons and 16 cases of water bottles. We just cruise through the crowd and give away water bottles (a servant evangelism project, technically, though we use the term ‘community service project’). We have a little card that we hand out with the bottles.

Why not a bigger splash? well, a few reasons. Firstly, we are a financially self-supporting community (read: no marketing budget). Secondly, we don’t have enough people to do a big fancy float for a parade or whatever. Thirdly, well… I wonder if we had those things, if I still would feel uneasy about that.

I like being the subversive little church down the street. The ones whom you’re going to get something from, who seem a little bit different. I like having personal touch with the community in simple ways. I hope we don’t ever resort to hanging cards on doorknobs, which strikes me as cold, impersonal, advertising. In the worst sense of the word.

Now of course it IS important for the church to make itself known in a variety of ways. Certainly by serving its community, but also, practically speaking, by letting the community know where to find it as well. So we have a little newspaper ad among the list of churches. We have a slide at the theatre. We put up sandwichboard signs with arrows pointing “this way” on Sundays and every now and then people have found us as a result of that.

And yet… isn’t making ourselves known as a collective of believers in Jesus a wise thing? “Hey, if you’re hurting, come hang out with us. Join us as go in search of help together” – that’s not so bad, is it?

Of course we advertise our marriage workshops, our Alpha course in traditional ways, just trying to catch peoples’ attention…

But really, the question is, “should a church advertise?” . And if yes, then “how should a church advertise?”