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The Church and most religious institutions are behind in marketing and branding campaigns. Spreading their message is critical to the fabric of their cause but the medium through which you share it, is critical for people to hear your message.
But this one takes the cake.
Story by Huffington Post
Kirk Cameron decided to market towards 50,000 (or 100,000 if they get the needed donations) universities. He has no relationship with them. He isn’t formally telling these universities about his “book dump” on Darwin’s 150 b-day. He’s just spamming them. Spam is an interrupted message you receive without prior approval. I doubt these universities will be happy about receiving these altered books and it’s probably going to cause a lot of controversy via the media.
Even if he nicely shared what he’s doing…does he have an ‘opt-out’ option? I doubt it. He thinks he’s being revolutionary with spamming universities with a new book. Content doesn’t matter when it’s medium is forceful. If no permission was given by the receiver, then the person doesn’t want to hear your good/bad message.
His book might have valid points. Science isn’t beyond reproach/question. It embraces questions and then disproves them with physical data. But, even if his book has valid points, I doubt anyone (maybe 1-2 brave souls) will even read it. Because of the flawed medium which he is about to do.
Kirk will have wasted all that money, time, trees, because his strategy is inherently flawed.
What if some evolution-believing people sent 50k-100k to churches? What would happen? There would be outrage. And I’m very confident that the church would bitch louder. Yea. I said bitch…
Good luck. But I already know the outcome Kirk. You’re going to do yourself (and your cause) a dis-service by doing this. Find a way to get people’s permission and people might hear you but this won’t change anything.
FYI, if you watch the spoof. I almost agree with everything she said. It explains a lot about the issues the church is facing with bringing people to their idea of faith.
Online Marketing has helped changed my view
Being in online marketing and learning what’s effective and why made me rethink a lot about the way that church is done and why it’s dying fast. Being passionate and emotional about something helps (it’s mainly why the pentecostals are growing rapidly…main natural reason) but much of the church is declining rapidly throughout America.
Is the Gospel no longer relevant? Is Science replacing God? Is Atheism too powerful to argue against? No. No. and No. Point blank, the people are identifying the message anymore. Typically you could talk in a authoritarian voice and people would follow you but no so in the church anymore. People have become glazed by the message, be it good or bad.
Why are they glazed about pulpit messages? They have lost respect, honor, and admiration for the clergy, therefore the church. Not only that, many pastors speak in Greek and Hebrew but they can’t break it down to common-day American English. Pastors speak messages that people can’t identify with. The bible is clear “to a Jew, I am a Jew”, so when we are among different cultures we should shape HOW we communicate the message, not the message itself.
Some reformed christians will be like “No, the issue is the message has changed”. Eh, it’s partly an issue but not as big as you think, liberal churches that deny Christ=God is few and far between.
Declining churches and mini-history of the dialogue
So, we have an issue, obviously, of declining church members/converts. I think the issue is the METHOD in how the church communicates the gospel. We are preaching AT people and not TO people. We are being authoritarian and not speaking as a humble servant.
For America specifically, I think churches should change their cultures/services to include a dialogue. I say this because it’s extremely biblical and because it’s effective (as seen by the internet). The bible states all believers are priests. This new status is a high privilege, that once only a selected group of a few people, literally you had to be a VERY VERY rare person to become a priest. Chosen by God, meeting numerous specifics, and you got to hear God, while others couldn’t, you had a direct line to God. Now we all do, as new believers.
In addition to this, priests, before Christ and even now, had discussions to discuss doctrine and beliefs. The power to “bind and lose” that Peter was given (by Christ), was actually the power to pick doctrine. He was saying, when the church agrees “x means this…..”, that is what it is. So, this means that the CHURCH (everyone…since we are all priests) has the power to discuss and debate doctrine. Not an elite hierarchy.
Again, NOT AN ELITE HIERARCHY. Meaning, the web designer, the tax collector, the mailman, and the priest have EQUAL authority to talk and make doctrine. This idea is somewhat new (from my understanding), the only group of people, other than the early church, is Quakers but they even have somewhat strayed away from this. I’m not a Quaker but I like some solid methodologies they promote.
So, within OT times, priests would get together to discuss doctrine and say “yes on this, no on this, etc”. Now today and for the past 2,000 years, Christians have had this GOD-given authority but have been suppressed from it for about 1,700 years.
How can we walk this out today?
- Encourage dialogue within church services. Have vocal feedback at the end of the message and allow questions and any random comments.
- Let others speak. Yes…even the former stripper and high school teacher.
- Have discussions with people as your “lecture”. Basically have a debate while everyone watches.
- Let atheists, anti-Christians, and any other non-Christian groups to speak.
- Think about other ways to involve people.
Conclusion
I could support all this with Scripture but I don’t have time to find them all. I’m sure I could within 30 minutes but any pastor or christian wanting to learn more just look up contextualization and dialogue. I forgot the hebrew words for Jewish dialogue but I’m sure you can find it or maybe ask a Christian professor. I doubt this will ever come about but it would be awesome to see the church shine as the way Christ intended. 