Ministry News

When the Marketing Scales Tip

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Tuesday, 12 May 2009 10:00

QUOTE: "The more churches I visit the more I realize we are less and less wrestling with heart-formation and more and more obsessing over how to market ourselves. … I'm a proponent of being a student of the culture. I think great effort should be made to come up with a medium that contextualizes. I get that. I'm on board. But the scales are in danger of being tipped. Over-contextualizing leads to positioning, posturing and marketing. I don't think that's the business we're in. I'm left in some cases to wonder whether we have decided that the strategy to reach our media-savvy generation revolves around packaging a cool, hip religious experience rather than life transformation through Jesus Christ." —pastor, church planter and blogger Jonathan Foster of Phoenix, Ariz., pondering the timeless medium vs. message dilemma as it relates to current church marketing [theproblemwithreligion.com, 4/27/09]