Len Hjalmarson at Next Reformation constantly posts “espresso quotes” from his extensive reading program – provocative thoughts that spark reflection that makes a difference. Yesterday he posted leaders … followers, which shared a quote from Earl Creps, author of Off-Road Disciplines: Spiritual Adventures of Missional Leaders. The quote focuses on two kinds of followership: churchly and unchurchly. It highlights the essence of what I believe makes a producer culture distinct from a consumer culture. You should read Len’s post before reading my riff/rant.
Okay, so now you’re back from reading leaders … followers, right? Good … then here it is. The core reason why I repudiate marketing models for church and mission, and why I look for cultural production instead.
If you’ve read at least a few posts in this blog, you’ve probably been made aware that I focus on culture. Maybe you wonder why I think it’s such a big deal, or even perhaps think I’m hung up on it to a destructive degree. Well, here’s why: I see culture as the most complex thing we humans produce, and that it represents one of the deepest ways we represent God’s image in our everyday lives. Specifically:
The culture we create reflects the image of a creative God who is our Creator.
In that very way, culture becomes an antidote to all forms of what’s been called “the marketing model.” Market can show up anyplace in our practices of church and mission.
- If we attract people to hear presentations for their own healing/good/revival instead of equipping them to work at cultivating an ongoing and persevering relationship with God, it’s personality-performance marketing, not church.
- If we list all the things people will get out of a saving relationship with Christ, and say nothing of the costs to them, it’s evangelism-coated marketing, not discipleship.
- If we present only contextualized relevance and no countercultural challenge to people in our social setting, it’s mission-sounding marketing, not missional.
When we take a marketing approach, it’s spiritual consumerism. And that bothers me … bothers me deeply, at both a personal and corporate level! I know there are ways I’m hooked into being a consumer, and I’m looking at them to see what I should do. I know we are hooked into being consumeristic/marketing-oriented churches, and I’m looking at this to see what we should do. I’ve long felt a need to respond, but it’s taken a long time to reflect on the core problem.
So, finally, here it is, the core reason I repudiate marketing models for church and mission – and actually, let me put myself in jeopardy even more and give my answer in the form of a question:
What quality in God’s image – His personhood or character – do consumerism and therefore marketing reflect?
I’ve thought about this for many months, and my answer is: None. There’s nothing of God’s character that I can see in the consumer/marketing model of church and mission. And I’ve never, ever heard a biblical/theological response from anyone else about what character quality of God supports the marketing model, have you?
Am I wrong? Am I missing something here? Or is God just not in it …
I cannot find a base in God’s person or character that supports the marketing model for church and mission. This is why I base all my contextualization work on the culture of what people produce, not on what they consume. This bases my systems for cultural interpretation in our God-given image of creativity, not in our gimme-God lust to be taken care of. (And I get it that I’ve got them both – the urge of creativity and the dirge of comfortability. I wrestle with them all the time. One leads to significant impact, the other to spiritual naps. I try to choose the former consistently, but it’s a struggle.)
This lack of grounding in God’s character also explains why missional research can easily go off track by using traditional marketing demographics and zip-code research. While those techniques can say something about people’s values, they ultimately look at what people are passionate about buying, instead of looking at the flip side to see what they are passionate about creating. And in the world as it is unfolding, collaborative creativity, social entrepreneurship, and innovative networking are coming to the forefront. This is an era where creativity, not consumption, may reign.
Think about it – these expressions of cultural production often aren’t things that can easily be sold. Justice. Family. Kindness. Innovation. Dignity. Honor. Reflection. Sharing. Aesthetics. They may sound ethereal, but they are what forge our everyday experiences of culture. For us as Christians, Kingdom Culture is the corporate outworking of Christlikeness in our individual character. And the only way to “buy” that is by “selling out” to Jesus. And however did we think such self-sacrificing devotion could ever fit in a marketing model?
God may present Himself as an All-Consuming Fire, but I don’t think that works as a spiritual credit card for the marketing model, do you? If providing products for peoples’ needs is our all important task, then we’re keeping them spiritual babies, aren’t we, and not empowering or equipping them to grow up, are we? If consumption and therefore marketing are supposedly in God’s character, then I’d hate to think what a bait-and-switch marketer God may do to us, come our time to meet Him face to face …
Okay, and now I have to go to work to earn the funds to pay the rent. Now, that would be an ironic end to such a rant, except for one factor that transmutes it into a paradox: by working now, I’ll buy myself the time to create later …
October 14, 2008 at 7:56 am
Amen. You’ve expressed here the great struggle that my husband and I are in right now with church work. Youth ministry to be specific. The two values (marketing vs. discipleship, consumption vs. production?) collide, but when we try to pursue and teach “self-sacrificing devotion” we get told that that might work, but we better be selling something too. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your words here on the subject.
October 14, 2008 at 9:46 am
Thanks Brad. Question. How would you differentiate between marketing and branding? Is there an appropriate means of communicating the character of a local church via ad methods?
October 14, 2008 at 10:46 am
Hello and thanks for your comments M/M Miller – glad the post captured some of what you’ve been wrestling with. And hi Robert, cool to see you again, virtually speaking. How’s the project report going?
In mulling over both comments, and your questions, Robert, I think there’s a dynamic tension involved here about internal realities and external publicity. I think some keys are authenticity and integrity – who we actually are and what we actually do matches what we say we are and what we say we do. That shows up even in how you phrased some of your second question, Robert: “communicating the CHARACTER of a local church …” It’s about our corporate character instead of “selling our services.”
How often do we get drawn in – “attracted” – to something that’s been advertised, but then feel afterward that we got hooked by a bait-and-switch tactic? So, we have to wrestle with finding where the line is between communicating clearly and come-on marketing. Both producer and consumer approaches rely on communication, but maybe a key difference is transparency: WYSISYG – what you see is what you get. Could it be that branding is fine when it’s about communicating who we are (values, purpose, perspectives, theology, etc.) and what we do, but not pimping what the advertisee will get out of joining us? If branding is about inviting people to participate, it’s good – and by “participate,” I mean genuinely participate, not just show up, sit down, shut up, give bucks, and get out of the parking lot to let the next guy in.
Also, I think in this complex era when everyone faces change, we need to show as much grace as possible toward ourselves and others, especially those who lead. It may cause way too much culture shock to suddenly shift everything about the ways we do church and try to become what we know we could/should. Anyway, we can’t change our public message with authenticity until we have the systems in place to back up the new message. Unless, of course, we simply say that we’re moving in a new direction and do not imply that we’re already there.
Seems to me this is why there’s a battle over the term “missional.” Churches that are into traditional evangelism and missions have taken to promoting themselves as “missional.” But they aren’t. Their paradigms don’t support being missional, their systems don’t, their services don’t. So their claims are hype. To put it very very bluntly, I have to conclude that, even if they want to become missional, stating that they already are is magical thinking – it’s a sophisticated form of self-deception that bleeds over into untruthful communications (i.e., others-deception in the form of sincere lies, but untruths none the less). For similar reasons, wanting to be “contextual” (culturally relevant) but without being countercultural (resisting destructive aspects of local culture) doesn’t work in the long run, even if we’re sincere.
Which is why the flow of the last few posts has proven interesting to me, because I’ve been saying that solidifying our systems is essential preparation for major cultural transitions and paradigm shifts. Maybe a good opoerational systems evaluation lets us be accurate and authentic in our branding/self-presentation and positioning among the choices we can make for where and how to participate in Kingdom stuff with a congregation of like-paradigmed people.
Okay, so I suppose that’s talking all around the issue you raised, Robert, but then, I feel like a human MRI sometimes, trying to get a 3-D picture from swirling around all the possible angles. Best I can do at the mo, and now, gotta lunch meeting and I gotta go!
Thanks again for checking in, and hope these further thoughts are of help … If I come up with more on the issue of marketing vs. branding I’ll comment later.
October 14, 2008 at 1:59 pm
[...] -Spiritual consumption vs. kingdom culture production on futuristguy [...]
October 20, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Another great post. I will blog on this post.
October 23, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Yo Bill! Thanks for droppin’ in.
I think I will be blogging on this post topic again. This one was sort of tense to write, and maybe it came out sounding a bit harsh, but for so long, I’ve witnessed the fall-out of market models and how they played out in seeker-sensitive churches, church plants, churches in transition, evangelism programs, etc. etc. I just felt it was time to say something about the results from years of reflecting on why these models consistently seem to lead to a lack of discipleship and thus to spiritual immaturity. So, for what it’s worth, there it is …