Post 1 finished off with the “over-marketing” of some churches. By that I do not only mean that they market a lot but that they rely heavily on marketing. Perhaps you have seen a place that has relied more on its “techniques and schemes” than on God Himself. Terrible people. I know because I have been guilty of that as well.
But what does it mean to market something? Is George Barna right when he says, everything is “marketed”? Is he wrong when he argues that churches need to do a better job in marketing or “taking on a marketing orientation” (p. 23)? To be fair, everything is “marketed” to some extent, including K&S’ book! The book has a cover that conveys “modest but serious” with an excellent picture of a broken down billboard announcing the book’s title. The text is clean, efficient with sub-headings to help guide the reader and the chapter pages are styled suggesting the smart people at Cascade Books did not merely say, “We’re going to be as simple as possible.”
Further, the book is only 164 pages which attracts readers who do not want to be bogged down in an endless abyss of rhetoric like other books for sale next to it in the “Theology” section. The publishing industry refers to these types of books as an “airplane book” because they are just short enough to read and finish on a plane. Ironically, most of the books by church marketing guru, George Barna are about this length. And finally, the foreword was written by the highly esteemed theologian Stanely Hauerwas and advertises his name on the bottom of the cover. That recommendation alone is a fantastic piece of marketing and as a consumer, I readily confess that I would be most interested in reading a book like this.
While the authors offer that they “are not trying to paint marketing as an evil enterprise …” or (accuse those that do) “are somehow sub-Christian” (p. 34), they do believe it is a serious mistake to place at the center of the church’s self-understanding what the church marketers so innocuously call a marketing orientation (ibid).”
For the sake of clarification, Barna defines further that marketing is “the process by which you seek to apply your product to the desires of the target population” (Barna. p. 23). An initial thought is that at some basic level, everything is “marketed”. If we practiced the same form of deconstruction as a collegiate lunch table after a Philosophy 101 class, George Barna and his marketing friends would have a case. Church signage, service bulletins, the worship experience, the pastor’s attire, websites, the Powerpoint background of the worship songs all apply a value (or desire) targeting a particular audience at some basic level.
Further, I concede that it can be interpreted that Jesus, Paul, and the writers of Scripture exercised some basic form of “marketing”. Evidence would be the decision to write in Greek as opposed to Aramaic or Hebrew. However, the value of K&S’ argument is in how much of a factor should marketing play in the role of the Church? This changes everything. In this light, certain questions are begged like, “What language would you have preferred the New Testament be written in?” The issue is that any language creates a targeted audience. At this basic, almost trivial level, there is no such thing as a language that is not “marketable”.
On a practical level, a naïve application of Barna’s definition would drive one mad. How does one dress? Can one imagine the sheer existential magnitude of determining which outfit to wear in the morning in order to avoid the accusation that “one is marketing him/herself”? How does one decorate their home? The logical answer is that at some point we are not continually marketing ourselves but are wearing clothes and outfitting our living spaces based on our preferences and expressions that the thought of pleasing a target audience is dismissed as “It’s no one’s business but we hope you accept our dinner invitation.”
Thus marketing becomes then an issue of motive. How much will the idea of marketing influence the church? Returning to the examples of Jesus, Paul and the N.T. writers, it would serve us well to question their motivation. When Jesus proclaimed the words that He knew would create enough enemies that would lead to his execution, it’s hard to take seriously He did so because this was the “soteriological product” he needed to promote and sell. It seems more likely that He proclaimed these words out of mission, calling, and a genuine love for people. The vehicles He employs (sermons, miracles, rhetoric, disciple-making) are not rooted in marketing but rather human interaction.
So I conclude this part by dismissing that while everything can be accused of marketed to a targeted audience on some basic level, I am more concerned with the our motivations for why we do what we do, especially as it pertains to the church.
Now it is not the purpose of this post to determine which motivations for conversion and discipleship are authentic (although our sarcastic spirits can probably figure some of that out), I do want to equal the playing field here when we question the motives of those like Bono or Jars of Clay or some other musician. But when these musicians’ activism brings clean water to a group of people, is that not true mission work? To some, mission work only happens if there is a “true gospel” presentation and while I certainly believe that we are to share about the crucifixion, resurrection and the way of Jesus, etc., I think too many evangelicals have largely missed the importance of things like clean water initiatives in places like Africa and addressing the needs here in our own communities.
Last week, a few friends and i got together and among many things, we got to talking about Billy Graham and Bono. I made the argument that to many, Bono is our generation’s Billy Graham. If you are a U2 basher, just hold on (or go listen to Lady Gaga or something) but hear me out. Admittedly there are significant character differences, certainly Bono is cooler, and certainly Billy Graham was more influential to the Protestant Church but a case could easily be made for Bono inspiring more people outside the church. Is that not huge part of the job description of an evangelist?
What is 
Aside from raising financial support, creating awareness is an extremely important part of the cause. We are not a large church and not a large youth group but we decided that this was a cause that we wanted to share with our friends. In some ways, this became a way of discussing faith and religion with others. But instead of asking questions like, “Do you know where you will go after you die?”, a better question was “Would you like to come to a free documentary screening about the atrocities in Uganda? It’s really moving and we can help.”
How you can get involved:
Finally here’s my review of 
While I cannot honestly say that DCLA is cheese-free (sorry Lost & Found), at least it’s focused on its mission. I do not claim to know the behind the scenes decisions, nor do I know specifics and I would only guess the names but from where I sit, it seems that after YS took over, the event underwent quite the paradigm shift. This year’s theme was “Be, Love, Serve, Repeat”. Perfect for our group. There were no bigger than CCM-life bands but it was cool that Family Force 5, Hawk Nelson, KJ-52 were there. All of us had a good time, we laughed, we were entertained and at times overloaded by it all but what I loved is that the focus on loving Christ and others was central. If you didn’t see it, you were daydreaming about Toby Mac and Mac Powell flying down from the rafters.
Shane Claiborne – we were debating whether to change our youth group name to the Shane Fan Club but another group already did that. They grew out their hair, had dreds, made their own clothes and ran their cell phones off of solar power. We were willing to do that and convert the church music room into a homeless shelter but we lost our momentum over the lifelong celibacy vow. In seriousness, judging from the low attendance at Shane’s seminars, he’s not the superstar to this age group as he is to X’ers and older Millennials but by Monday, everyone knew who he was. (Ours did of course, because Claiborne worshippers like 
– Kendall Payne – I’m pretty sure she’s not signed to a label but a true indie artist. I admit I almost missed the boat on Kendall. She had released some kind of anti skinny model looking girls song that encouraged girls to appreciate themselves for who they were and to pursue a healthy sense of identity but she probably didn’t hear how it sounded with a bunch of 14 year old girls singing it in the church van (a moment from a few years ago that resulted in Bose, noise-cancelling headphones to all youth leaders). The rest of her work is brilliant (like Scratch and I personally like the Grown album.) I usually don’t like to talk about the cover songs of talented artists but she did two that are worth mentioning. One was “What if God Was One of Us?” which was pretty controversial back recorded by Joan Osborne back in 1995. It seemed to me that too many of us Christians perceived it as an attack on God’s deity but instead, it said and asked a lot more. She also did a cover of U2’s “One”. It was smooth and slow and I hope one day a youtube clip of it appears. As a fan of U2 (Sept 26 at Giants Stadium can’t come 
fast enough!), this song is so overdone, but Kendall did a fantastic job.
– … the focus on our worship wasn’t on Starfield’s lead singer so much. With access to multiple camera angles, a million different types of backgrounds, a million more that motion backgrounds and the idea of flat worship, Tim’s face was on the big screen way too much and it got distracting. I know that is not Tim’s, Starfield’s or YS’s intention but it seemed considerably more than at NYW Conferences. This isn’t a criticism of Starfield, I like them but just the way we did worship seemed too focused on them. I didn’t mention this until one of our students brought it up. It led to a great conversation regarding worship.
In some ways, this story begins at Youth Specialties’ National Youth Workers Conference (NYWC). Most years, I attend this and among the great speakers and seminars found at this event is the Exhibition Hall.
After returning home, I remember sitting in my office filing some of the brochures and creating a “Top-5”.
HIV in Africa while there are approximately 250 thousand that have the HIV virus in the Caribbean area.
To be honest, I didn’t have any cut-off numbers as l mentioned some of this is arbitrary and stats are not always the best way to determine the legitimacy of a cause. What they did for us was provide context and perspective. Further it was helpful for me to those that speak in the language of stats and figures. Anyway, this is part of what I shared with those around me and then to our sr. high group and eventually to the church. Most people got it, supported it, and loved it. Today, I find myself so grateful to how this all came to be.
Maybe what was so unique about this experience was so many incredible aspects coming together.
Let’s be clear here, the work sucked.
We had a great team of students that got along great with each other which is hard to do when you’ve been together for 2 weeks, exhausted, hungry, and feeling disgusting most of the time.
mixing cement with us.
brother Vince who lost his eye sight while serving in prison but was committing Scripture to memory by listening to cds.
ourselves.
There was a part of me that did not want to mention Michael Jackson in a blog post because, to be honest, so many already were and I didn’t want to be trendy.
While I may not join every new group that bears a cause on Facebook, nor add every button/badge/etc. created, I think some things are good … for me. As subjective as it sounds, they remind me to remember the hurting, to pray for the hope of Christ and to be informed, to care, to give, and to think what can I do.
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