Why Church Marketing Should Stop

In a previous post, I commented on Tony Morgan’s post “Churches Should Stop Marketing.” Tony has now posted a followup post entitled “Why Churches Should Stop Marketing.” Click the link and read the post before hearing my response.

Tony argues that churches view larger, “more successful” churches as models and try to mimic them. They observe what the larger churches (like NewSpring, Saddleback, LifeChurch.tv, ect.) do to promote the ministry, copy the strategy and plan, apply it to their church, and then complain when their attendance doesn’t balloon to 20,000 people overnight. The “failure” of not gaining all those people is because the church was too focused on the external tools (marketing, music, structure) to help grow the church body, instead of looking at the internal problems that are holding the church back. Marketing is not always the answer to church growth; in fact, removing your emphasis on marketing and using those resources to help the community might be your ministry’s key. Essentially, Tony is saying that church marketing is not bad, so long as it is done for the right reason: to see more people come to God.