Subtitled: A marketing consultant advises early church leaders, this provides perceptive insight into some contemporary church growth strategies.
…Let’s begin with one of your leading PR men, Peter, who is clearly a gifted communicator. We believe he would find that our seminar “Winning Techniques for Effective Communication” would help him be more effective still! Unfortunately, he has the regular habit of berating his audience, just at the moment when he has them eating out of his hand.
For example, after that day when everyone thought you all were having one giant party in the middle of the day (by the way, that was a stroke of marketing genius, to show everyone that you all know how to have a good time), Peter gave what frankly was a long-winded speech (we’d recommend no more than five minutes in the future), rehearsing a great deal of history (we’d recommend sticking with the present; nobody cares about the past anymore), and then ended on a couple of awkward notes.
…We understand there is lots of talk about “repentance” in these marketing presentations, and we understand that personal moral change is required in the movement. But it’s not wise to put that up front in your initial presentations. Along with the death of your founder, we advise you to downplay talk of repentance until people are well into the movement. You don’t want to push people away needlessly before you show them all that you have to offer.
…As for your name, that too will take some concerted research. We recommend in the interim that you stay away from “Christians,” as that will only remind people of your founder and his gruesome death. We think “Followers of Jesus” would work, as it would focus on the life of your founder and emphasize his ethical genius. It would also downplay redemptive religion, with all its talk of sin and repentance, as well as that business about his coming again (such speculative theology will do your movement no good, in our opinion). “Followers of Jesus” is also vague enough to leave room for the imagination, allowing you to shape the movement according to the felt needs of your target audience.
Read: How To Become A Successful Religion
HT: Trevin Wax
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