Marketing or action

I’m a big fan of Mark Batterson’s blog. He tends to find unique ways of looking at faith that challenge me and keep me moving forward.
Today he shared a mailer that his church (National Community Church) plans to send to 10,000 Washinton D.C.’ers.
That’s a load of mail! Batterson says, “We have a simple marketing mantra: we don’t want anybody in the metro DC area to be able to deny our existence.”
I love the idea behind the mantra – but I wonder how effective a mailer is for getting people to come to church. Now keep in mind, I also agree with Batterson that “The greatest message needs the greatest marketing” – but what if we improved the delivery and marketing by increasing the personal touch of a church.
Batterson himself says that 86% of NCCers initially visit one of their church campuses because of a personal invitation. I would bet that stat holds pretty true for encounter as well.
When people are asked how they found out about encounter there are three things I remember hearing, “Someone told us about it” or “We saw the add in the theater” or “We saw a bumper sticker.” For a couple friends of mine, they said they kept seeing the encounter name/logo everywhere. They saw bumper stickers, the add in the theater and a flyer or business card in different businesses. So while word of mouth may be the most effective way to get people to come to your church – it’s sure not the only way.
But I’d love it if church was done so well and we “stopped being the church and started doing church” so that people could not deny our existence because of the impact we had in our community.
I’d love if people knew us, not because of a mailer or a huge billboard, or a huge fancy building along I-35, but because they actually saw our people quietly living the Christian life in a relevant way in our community.
I’d love if instead of spending X dollars on a mailer, we spent that money to deliver food to the needy in Ellis County or spent that money to give water to joggers on the Hike and Bike trail. If we as church members could truly live out our faith – then I would imagine it would be hard for anyone in Waxahachie to deny the existence of our church – or better yet, deny the existence of God.