Editor’s note: Call & Response is running a series of posts this week and next on the topic of Christian institutional marketing. Read Melissa Wiginton's and James Howell's posts from this week.
You don't have to search very far into the internet abyss to find some fantastically awful examples of church signs, t-shirts and bumper stickers, or ads that showcase the “perfect” family with the perfect house and the perfect life that Christianity promises you (compliments of Joel Osteen). Thanks to sites like Epic Fail, the once-quirky poke at tacky religious types is now a tired, pathetic cliché.
How about something less predictable? Do you have any examples of churches or organizations that do a good job telling their story? How do they do it, what mediums (video, web, social media) do they use, and what makes it effective -- or as James Howell suggests, maybe even holy?
The reservations that he and Melissa Wiginton mention are understandable. Something seems theologically amiss in the attempt to distill the complexity of Christian identity into a marketing slogan (with large Christian institutions, take that complexity and multiply it by ten). But Howell and Wiginton also point out the opposite problem: if you don’t tell your story clearly, no one will know who you are, what you do or who you serve. You may think the idea of “marketing” is sleazy (or even demonic), but there’s nothing sleazy about asking these questions of your organization and communicating your answers to them clearly. After all, “Who do you say I am?” is a fundamentally Christian question.
Sometimes we make the process more complicated than it needs to be. Don't let this guy’s hipness distract you; Jonathan Collins does a good job explaining the importance of telling your organization’s story, and offers some helpful ways to communicate a complicated idea, initiative or mission well, so that people “get it.”
So, tell us. Who’s telling their story well?
