When we "market," we try to make a larger audience aware of the value of exchanging a good or service. We assume both parties will benefit from the transaction. Marketing is a wonderful thing. I like to hear pitches about products I might use. I like the fact that my publishers pitch my books to a larger public. Thank God for marketing!
But there's a reason Jesus said "You shall be my witnesses," and not "You shall be my marketers."
Almost no one in America could fail to recognize that marketing—both its language and culture—has become an epidemic. And that, more unfortunately, it has become a significant means of "promoting" the church and the gospel in American Christianity, with billboards, soundbites, slogans, and come-ons. The language and practice of marketing so saturates the Christian world, it is difficult to remember a time when it was not so fashionable.
In Jesus' day, marketing was not the rage, but still it was something Jesus prohibited on many occasions. Take his dramatic healing of a leper, after which he sternly commanded him, "See that you say nothing to anyone!" (Mark 1:44). Scholars call this repeated behavior "the messianic secret," and many preachers imagine that Jesus had mostly pragmatic concerns in mind: If word of his power spread, he not only would have been flocked by crowds, but he would also have been prematurely crucified by the authorities.
Maybe. But I wonder if soft-peddling the Good News is intrinsic to the message. Jesus spoke in parables, he said, not to reveal the Good News but to hide it: "For those outside everything is in parables, so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand" (Mark 4:11). Elsewhere, he specifically tells his disciples not to cast gospel-pearls before swine. Make something as cheap as slop, and people will treat it like slop.
Jump ahead 20 centuries, and we find a church that doesn't think twice about treating the gospel like slop, like fast food. About 30 years ago, the church-growth movement exploded onto the scene; churches became enamored with the efficiency of businesses like Disney and McDonald's, and they began fashioning their life together to meet people's needs in the same sorts of ways—except that their product was the gospel. So churches became places where thousands could be served efficiently. And where the message was served in McSermons that could be easily digested and applied.
And where "marketing" became part of the church's vocabulary.
When the church starts marketing itself or the gospel, something odd is taking place. It conjures up the idea that the church is offering them some benefit—all well and good. But it also implicitly suggests that when they "buy" or consume that good, the church somehow receives some benefit. That's the assumption of the marketplace: it's an exchange of value for goods and services.
Should it surprise us, then, that in the same era the church has marketed itself more and more, neighborhoods and cities are increasingly resentful of the presence of the church in their communities? Churches today have a heck of a time trying to get permits for expanding or building because communities think they're a nuisance. The church has become just another business exchanging goods and services, albeit spiritual goods and services.
The perception is that as the church markets itself, more benefits will accrue to the church—more people, more programs, more money, more buildings, more success. When a neighborhood thinks of the church as little more than an ever-expanding spiritual business, it is naturally resentful when this business disrupts the life of the community with parking, traffic, and late-night meetings.
Should it surprise us that in this church-marketing era, members demand more and more from their churches, and if churches don't deliver, they take their spiritual business elsewhere? Have we ever seen an age in which church transience was such an epidemic?
Should it surprise us that in this era, pastors increasingly think of themselves as "managers," "leaders," and "CEOs" of "dynamic and growing congregations," rather than as shepherds, teachers, and servants of people who need to know God? And that preaching has become less an exposition of the gospel of Jesus' death and resurrection and more often practical lessons that offer a lot of "take-away value," presented in an efficient, friendly manner, as if we were selling cheeseburgers, fries, and a shake?
And on it goes. Let me be clear. There is nothing inherently wrong with large churches. Medieval Europe was full of them, and I long for the day when those cathedrals will be full of the worshiping faithful again. I have been blessed time and again by the ministry of megachurches.
Today churches large and small (the small imitating the large) have unthinkingly adopted a marketing mentality that, it turns out, subverts rather than promotes the gospel. We inadvertently imply that the church benefits as much from the spiritual transaction as does the recipient. Marketing, by its very nature, contradicts the essence of the gospel lifestyle of Jesus, who came not to be served, but to expend his life for others—no exchange implied or expected.
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How can we possibly communicate the radical, self-giving love of God to our culture if we continue to use a method that by its very nature replaces the notions of sacrificial service for an exchange of goods and services?
We are indeed called to the four corners of the earth to be witnesses of Christ's transforming love. But witnesses are not carnival barkers. Sometimes it feels like the church is just another voice shouting for attention in the marketplace. I wonder what would happen if we quit shouting, if we quit trying to tell the world how beneficial the faith is or what a difference going to church can make—and simply told others, when appropriate, what God has done for us, and let our lifestyle "market" the message.
In "SoulWork," Mark Galli brings news, Christian theology, and spiritual direction together to explore what it means to be formed spiritually in the image of Jesus Christ.
Mark Galli is former editor in chief of Christianity Today and author, most recently, of Karl Barth: An Introductory Biography for Evangelicals.
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