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George Martin's office—the office of Saints Martha and Mary Episcopal Church—is in the basement of a funeral home. Public-school gymnasiums, library auditoriums, and all the other public meeting spaces in Eagan, Minnesota, have been taken by other church-planting efforts. Thus every Sunday, in one of the funeral home's parlors, Martin erects a portable screen on which to hang a cross and a banner in order to help the brand-new 90-member congregation feel as if it has gone to church.

In addition to his job as vicar, Martin is also executive director of the Episcopal Ad Project, a high-quality, but low-budget, effort to get the attention of the unchurched. Appropriately, in a recent ad, the vicar of this funeral-home church appeared as one of a half-dozen pall bearers carrying a casket. The headline reads, "Will it take six strong men to bring you back into the church?" The fine print explains that the church "welcomes you no matter what condition you're in, but we'd really prefer to see you breathing."

Tom McElligott's office—the office of the ad agency that produces Martin's church ads—is in downtown Minneapolis, 18 miles from Martin's mortuary meeting space. The Fallon McElligott agency occupies the fifteenth and sixteenth floors of the blue steel-and-glass 701 building. There the grey-carpeted hallways and the reserved grey, upholstered walls are punctuated by the eye-popping work that has brought the agency national recognition. Ads for Bloomingdale's, the Wall Street Journal, and Lee jeans are mixed in with the more socially conscious pro bono work they have done for the Children's Defense Fund and the Episcopal Ad Project.

"We're trying to stop people with these ads," McElligott says of the Episcopal Church promotions. "We're trying to make them open up their mental boxes. This is the first step in opening the possibility of regular church attendance."

The laid-back McElligott, relaxed in a green gingham-checked shirt and khakis, says he particularly enjoys beginning the ad brainstorming process with a piece of classical religious art. McElligott takes Titian's portrayal of Daniel in the lion's den as an example. "People have closed their minds to that art. But by pulling it out of its original context and giving it a contemporary point of reference, we've made it meaningful again. Although," admits McElligott sheepishly, "I'm not sure I'd want to explain that to Titian."

What McElligott and Martin saw in Titian's painting was stress. Like the biblical Daniel, Christians have often been at odds with conventional values and had to live with stress—and help each other cope. So Martin and McElligott put a headline above the painting: "Contrary to conventional wisdom, stress is not a 20th century phenomenon."

The Ad Project got its start in 1975, when Martin became rector of Saint Luke's Episcopal Church in Minneapolis. "The church had lost its punch," says Martin. "There was lots of gray hair, and I was doing 20-plus funerals a year. The funerals way outnumbered the baptisms."

Martin realized that going door-to-door in a highly churched area would not have paid off much in increased attendance. Sixty-five to 70 percent of the residents in this city claim a church affiliation, and Martin was realistically trying to reach the relatively small fraction of the remainder who would be attracted to the Episcopal church.

So he started to write newspaper ads for his church. Those early ads showed some creativity, but they lacked polish. "People told me, 'George, you need help,'" says Martin, and they suggested he talk to McElligott, then a rising star in the advertising heavens and himself the son and son-in-law of Episcopal clergy. Thus began a nine-year collaboration that has not only earned national awards but has also called the unchurched to worship.

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July (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45