Selling out the Church: The Dangers of Church Marketing

Selling out the Church: The Dangers of Church Marketing
Kenneson, Philip D. and James L. Street.  Eugene, Cascade Books. 1997.

Much of the current work on Evangelism is a worthless  kind of cross between ‘The Magic of Thinking Big’ and ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People.’ The next time you visit your local Christian book store, look under the section headings of ‘Church Growth’ or ‘Church Leadership’ and you will find a wide variety of books offering every manner of 12 step program for your church to reach its full potential.  Despite the variety of colorful covers, one constant in all these books is the acceptance of the validity and even necessity of a market mentality. Selling Out the Church challenges the presence of the market mentality and its accompanying techniques in the local church.

Philip Kenneson and James Street begin the book with the question “Can the market driven church remain Christ’s church?” (16) The question is motivated by a deep conciction that the principals which motivate the market stand at odds with those which should give life to the church.  Early on, the two state their position, “We believe that the church is called to be a sign, a foretaste, and a herald of God’s present but still emerging kingdom…If the convictions that animate the life of the church are at cross purposes with the convictions at the heart of this coming kingdom, then the church will fail to be what God has called it to be.” (23)  The authors then set out to show how the convictions of the ‘market orientation’ orient us not towards the Kingdom of God but towards the kingdoms of this world.

The book begins with a forward written by Stanley Hauerwas and then proceeds with seven rich chapters and a conclusion. To offer just one example, the second chapter challenges the neat separation of form and content which is a central assumption of church marketing advocates. Street & Kenneson state “Church marketers assume that marketing is a neutral process or technique that leaves the substance of the faith untouched.  Said another way…marketing affects only the form in which the faith is presented, not the content of the faith itself.” (26) The assumption that marketing techniques are neutral allows market advocates to both side step discussions about whether market strategies are appropriate for the church, and suggest that market techniques can be employed without actually affecting the content of the gospel message. Put differently, marketers argue that changing the package does not necessarily change the content.

This is exactly what Street & Kenneson set out to challenge. Techniques are not value neutral but are embodied in much larger narratives that give them meaning. Someone who refuses to eat because they are on a diet and someone who refuses to eat because they are on a hunger strike are using the same technique (not eating) but their story and the end to which they are working give different meanings to the technique. This serves as a helpful rebuttal to those who would claim that if your church has a sign out front, you are already doing church marketing. This is not true. The presence of the sign is given intelligibility by the end to which it is pointing.  This is just small example of the counter-cultural witness of this book. The authors state repeatedly that their goal is simply to begin to help us to see the subtle ways that a market orientation subverts the Church’s counter-cultural witness and forces us to mimic the consumer culture in which we live.

The only complaint that I have about this book is that it is too short. I would have liked more help with a constructive path forward. They point in some helpful directions while at the same time making it clear that their task is assessing the illness not prescribing the corrective medicine. The last sentence of the book stands as a wonderful witness in and of itself. Speaking of the Jesus that few in our current cultural climate want to encounter, the authors state, “it is this Jesus who reveals to us…that the way to life is through death.” (164)  No doubt this sentence sends chills down the spine of church marketers and growth gurus.

Selling out the Church is a wonderful book and I would highly recommend it to churches discerning the fine line between faithfulness and selling out the church.

(Phil Kenneson is an endorser of the Ekklesia Project. Follow the link on this blog to see more examples of the important work of the Ekkleisa Project.)