Here’s the thing: everything is marketing. It’s not just your emails, website, and social media. It’s the atmosphere of the room, the friendliness of the people, the honesty of the message, how safe everyone feels, and so much more. Marketing is only good marketing when the story being told is true. But telling a true story in a way that can be heard requires thoughtfulness and intentionality on every level. The tactics a church uses don’t matter if they’re telling a false story.

Some churches are repulsed by the idea of marketing. Other churches aren’t repulsed enough. Both of them arise out of a misunderstanding about what marketing is.

When we think about marketing, we often think about soulless, anonymous, individualistic promotion. We think the goal of marketing is bigger, better, faster, stronger. It feels manipulative. How can we sell someone something they don’t need by exploiting an insecurity they didn’t know they had?

As a dad with young kids, I have a theory that there are entire lines of baby products that were created, not because they make your life better, but because they can exploit the fears and ignorance of new parents for profit. It makes me upset when I see some parents with certain products. I’m not upset at them for having normal concerns; I’m upset at the company for exploiting them. This is bad marketing. Not because it doesn’t work; but because it does work to the detriment of the consumer.

It’s understandable that we get squeamish when churches use these types of words, tactics, or strategies. The gospel is not a product to sell; it’s the announcement of good news! It’s the power of salvation! It’s the wisdom of God!

Yes and amen.

So you’ll understand my surprise when I stumbled upon this paragraph from an essay from arguably the greatest living Reformed theologian, John Frame.

He writes,

“Nor is preaching in contrast to marketing in anything like the modern sense of the term. It depends, of course, on how you define marketing. Most critics of marketing in the church don’t define the term carefully. If it simply means to make something known, to advertise, using the most effective communication available, then certainly the church should market its gospel. Christianity is a missionary faith. It is charged in the Great Commission with bringing the gospel to everyone.

If one defines marketing in a narrower sense, as using various techniques unworthy of the gospel, then we need to discuss what those techniques are, and why they are unworthy. If they are, then they are excluded from kerygma [proclamation]. In this case, the means of communication contradict the content of the gospel, and certainly 1 Corinthians 1:21 rules out any presentation that obscures that content. Again, the focus is on content, not on media in themselves. But when the media obstruct the message, they must be changed.

The church should have a dialogue on what means of communication obscure the gospel message. But simply to contrast marketing with preaching sheds no light on the issue.”

Frame’s comments are insightful. The problem with marketing the gospel is not marketing as a category but the tactics used in the marketing. Are the tactics unworthy of the gospel? Are they manipulative? Are they self-aggrandizing? These questions and more are worth asking.

The most fundamental marketing tactic is storytelling. When telling the story, who is the main character? Who is the hero? Is it a “consumer”?

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