I’ve been seeing quite a few blogs and tweets lately about the church’s struggle between relevance and message. This topic is at the forefront of many minds perhaps in response to the recent national chatter about churches experimenting with Twitter and other social technologies.

That’s the connection I see anyway, but I’m sure it runs deeper to a larger discussion of the emerging and emergent church movements.

Whether it’s maintaining cultural relevance or implementing some crazy new social media technology, the question needs to first be “why?” If you don’t know why you’re attempting to be relevant (some people just don’t give a hoot), and you don’t know why you’re evangelizing your church for Twitter, then you’re operating at the behest of an agenda not your own. Someone’s advertising is working on you.

Romans 12:2 ESV
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Brad Abare of churchmarketingsucks.com has some good comments in a recent Advertising Age article “Churches Get Religion on Marketing”. The winning quote for me, though, goes to United Methodist Church General Secretary Rev. Larry Hollon: “Advertising makes a promise, and if you live up to that promise with integrity, that’s as much as you can do.”

Craig Groeschel
Cool is No Longer Cool
http://swerve.lifechurch.tv/2009/05/13/cool-is-no-longer-cool/

Jonathan Foster
Medium is the Message
http://discoverj.blogspot.com/2009/04/medium-is-message.html

the same blog post got a new title (The Failure of Church Marketing) and re-posted here:
http://church.wrecked.org/?filename=the-failure-of-church-marketing

And that article was picked up here and there with some commentary:

Catalyst - The Failure of Church Marketing
http://www.catalystspace.com/catablog/full/the_failure_of_church_marketing/

Church Marketing Sucks
http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com/archives/2009/05/the_failure_of.html

Mark Driscoll
Vintage Church: How Can a Church Utilize Technology
http://theresurgence.com/Vintage-Church-How-Can-a-Church-Utilize-Technology

A recent Twitter exchange between @DavidAndGoliath and @tonymorganlive:

DavidAndGoliath says:
@tonymorganlive Faith isn’t a product. Stop trying to sell it like it’s McDs. 5:02 PM May 10th

tonymorganlive says:
@DavidAndGoliath so do you think we should keep our faith to ourselves? (just trying to understand your perspective.) 5:04 PM May 10th

DavidAndGoliath says:
@TonyMorganLive No, of course not. But orgs. are increasing the box size and reducing the content in order to market2masses. 5:12 PM May 10th

tonymorganlive says:
@DavidAndGoliath maybe some are. but the Gospel leads to life change which leads to people spreading that good news. that’s “marketing.” 5:31 PM May 10th