Sunday, May 25, 2008

Marketing or Military

a Biblical thought...
You know the old saying, "First you eat to live, and then you live to eat"? Well, it may be true that the body is only a temporary thing, but that's no excuse for stuffing your body with food, or indulging it with sex. Since the Master honors you with a body, honor him with your body! (1 Cor 6:13)

a Book thought...
The American obsession with the second coming of Jesus, or rather with one particular and, as we shall see, highly distorted interpretation of it, continues unabated. (p131 Wright)
a Dave thought...
Yesterday at the Men's Bible Convention I sat under the teaching of David Starling, currently a lecturer at Morling College, a Baptist college in Sydney. He gave a very thought provoking message on Ephesians 6 on how the military metaphor used here with putting on the Armour of God has been replaced today with the marketing metaphor of the church. We no longer disciple and teach our people to get ready for battle but rather we use catchy slogans and deceptive advertising to somehow get people into our buildings. You only have to check out churchmarketingsucks.com to see how badly we use this tool, I even own a book from the nineties titled Marketing the Church by George Barna.
So even though are marketing is slicker than ever before church attendances continue to decrease so maybe David is on to something and it is time to engage with the military metaphor once again.

Just a thought.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I beleive that younger people are bombarded by advertising and what they really seek is genuine community and this is often not found within the walls of the large well marketed churches. I battle with this all the time - should we be this or should we be that... the speaker was right many christians are unaware of the way in which the enemy attacks and how we should be prepared to stand against it.

Anonymous said...

I agree with the above commentor. We have to give some fancy name to everything to ?get people in to the Church and yet many of them don't understand what we are talking about. I work with the public and their language is about going to Sunday school as kids and Church as adults. These days we call these things all sorts of things such as "Kidzbiz" etc, a language that smacks of the outside world and doesn't mean a thing to the ordinary person unless we explain it. We have to offer them something that sounds more substantial than what the world has to offer and need to be prepared to wield God's armour against the attacks of the enemy. Let's get back to the basics so that people understand what we are on about.

Kathleen Pearce said...

Bring on the Military Terminology.
Who is who famously said.. "This is a war - it is NOT a metaphor!"? (RC?)
Plus.. I think young people would give anything to have a "cause to die for", it's in their nature.
That's just my 2 cents.