"Re-Marketing the Church" by John Koessler

John Koessler

Zondervan's blog occasionally features essays from our authors. Today's essay is by John Koessler, author of A Stranger in the House of God.

USA TODAY recently published the results of a survey by LifeWay research which indicates that a majority of Americans who do not attend church believe in God. According to the article by Cathy Lynn Grossman, 72% of adults who never attend church, believe that God exists. The same percent feels that the church is full of hypocrites.

This is not exactly a news flash to anyone who has actually attended a church. It is a criticism as old as the church itself. If I were defensive, I might wonder how the unchurched can be so sure about the moral character of those who are in the pews since by their own admission, these respondents never attend.

However, there is ample evidence from those who attend church that there is a problem. Last month the Christian Post published research by Rainer Research which said that only 39 percent of those who dropped out of the church perceived their church as being “caring.” Approximately half said their church was “judgmental.”

I don’t think this is especially surprising. Why should we be shocked to find that a majority of those who left the church are unhappy with the church? It would be a surprise to learn that those who left the church loved their experience there. I would be interested in hearing the assessment of those who remain. Do they share the assessment of their departed brethren?

I suspect they might. And they would probably point out that the church is made up of those who are being perfected not those who are perfect. The expectations of the unchurched are too high. But some church leaders argue that the problem is the opposite. They would say that church’s expectation of itself are too low.

Erwin McManus, lead pastor at Mosaic Church in Los Angeles recently told the Christian Post that the church’s primary problem is its narcissism. According to McManus “…American Christians tend to be incredibly self-indulgent so they see the church as a place there for them to meet their needs and to express faith in a way that is meaningful for them. There is almost no genuine compassion or urgency about serving and reaching people who don’t know Christ.”

This is McManus’s own view and not a scientific assessment based on data. But if he is right, McManus’s assessment offers a sobering reality check for a church whose outreach strategy has been shaped by a marketing model. For decades now we have been telling churches to think about the customer and to shape their services with the unchurched in view. As a result, countless congregations have struggled to rethink the way they do church. They have changed day and time when they meet, the content of the sermon has been popularized, and the style of music has been altered. All of this has been done in an effort to make unchurched Harry and unchurched Mary feel at home. Church members who feel uncomfortable with these changes have been told that they need to sacrifice their own tastes for the sake of the church’s mission.

So how is it possible that, after decades of marketing ourselves to outsiders, attenders see the church as a place whose primary function is to meet their own needs? My answer is that this is the inevitable outcome of marketing the church. Our efforts have worked but not in the way we had hoped. The marketer’s strategy is to find out what the customer wants and give it to them. We want people to be comfortable in the church. We want them to feel welcome. We want them to hear the music they like and to enjoy the sermon. Is it any wonder that after decades of shaping the church’s ministries around the worshipper, those worshippers believe the church exists primarily for their own benefit? How could they think otherwise? But what if we were to change our view of the church’s constituency? What would happen to our thinking and our experience if we were to place God at the center? Instead of human centered ecclesiology, what would the church look like with a Christ centered ecclesiology? We would surely be changed. And in the process, we might find the very church we had always longed for.

http://zondervan.typepad.com/zondervan/2008/06/re-marketing-th.html