You are impacted by marketing. Every product you see in a store; billboard; internet; newspaper; magazine or radio/TV commercial is a result of marketing. We can deny that marketing doesn’t impact us but it does. Probably 99% of the items in your house are there because someone in marketing first captured your attention then they captured your dollar!
But what about ‘marketing’ the church? Is church marketing good or bad? It could be both. If you market your church because of pride to keep up with other churches or if you market in such a way that diminishes the meaning of the gospel then marketing is bad. If however, your goal in connecting to the unchurched in marketing is to use methods to let them know where you are and that you care deeply for them then marketing is good.
Jesus and Paul both used different methods (marketing) to connect with people and shared the gospel with them. In our city of some 70,000 people you can be sure many people need a church exactly like EBC. Yet it is almost impossible to find Emmanuel Baptist even if you were looking for it. The only way recent guests have found EBC from the internet! Our recent guests are pretty excited that they located EBC. They say, ‘WE FOUND IT!”
It saddens my heart to think there are hundreds of people who need Jesus; need a church family; need a word of encouragement who need a good hug but they don’t know who we are or where we are. We have a responsibility and a privilege to connect (market) to them so they might be a part of this body of Jesus. Please pray for wisdom for the Ministry Development Team as they continue to consider ways to connect with people in our community all of the glory of our King Jesus!
I know we can make a difference!
Pastor Scott