c. scott andreas

[ I posted this comment at Church Marketing Sucks this evening.
If you’re from CMS, skip to the next post. Thanks. — csa ]

Though I’ve since moved to a new area, I spent two years with a church that had a very interesting goal:

It grew to split.

Today, this congregation is about ten years old and numbers only 350. Yet it has spun off four or five new congregations in the surrounding area (and one in South America).

A few interesting notes:
- This church lies in a small town of ~8,000 people.
- This church’s web site has been “offline for maintenance” for several months.
- The banner hanging above the front door is a Rick Warren / National Ad Council mashup of white text over a black background saying “got purpose?”

My point here is that Christ reaches people without slick, original marketing, too. Though the bulletin employs both Comic Sans and enough exclamation marks to excite Ben Stein, they still “manage” to live out the missional journey of a life with Jesus Christ guided by his Holy Spirit quite well.

I work in cross-media design to help churches and their ministries establish visual identity. I don’t care for church signs that employ puns. But I love my job. And I always get excited when I hear about people who have become interested in a church I’ve worked for as a result of a promo piece.

But I’ve spent most of today designing a DVD cover and running proofs through a finnicky printer. And I spent a good portion of this evening with a young woman who has severe vision difficulties but a beautiful heart. The promo disc doesn’t mean anything to her, but the Spirit of God has touched her life through the community in a profound way. Which of these is more important?

There’s a part of me that longs for the simple days of MS Word and a B&W copier.

Let’s just remember what “marketing” and “growth” are for: to help communicate effectively the good news of Jesus Christ, and to add to that number of communicators.

But which is more important? That the gospel is lived, or kerned?