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What Every Church Needs to Know about Marketing:
Part 1: The Background

About twelve years ago God called my wife and I out of our comfortable, upwardly mobile lives in corporate marketing into a full-time pursuit of serving churches. At the time, to say that it was an uphill battle was an understatement. We left two executive level salaries and a new house that we had just built in Scottsdale, to sell our house and a car and move in with relatives just to make it. We saw our financial livelihood drop by 90%, while we were working hours and hours for churches that sometimes asked for everything for free. I did not blame them nor resent them, it was all they knew. We were a challenge to their status quo in every way. We were broke, passionate and completely insistent in our pursuit to help the church—who often times mistook us as an agent of hypocrisy.

So why did we do it? On a volunteer mission trip, in 1996, I received a calling. A soft, inaudible, still, small voice that I can only describe to church leaders as the voice that spoke to them the moment when they first knew—when they first knew their lives would never be the same—that they were being called out by God to do a work for Him. There I was, sitting on a smelly bus in West Mexico, receiving a life’s calling. At the same time, my girlfriend (soon to be wife) was thousands of miles away receiving similar words. We had both volunteered in church and worked in marketing for some time before the week that we began to see these worlds collide—yet we had never imagined what God was bringing together.

Since that time, we have been honored to work with thousands of churches of every shape, size, background and denomination. We have seen struggling churches grow again, plateaued churches reach new heights and growing churches strategically manage their climb while assimilating more people into a deeper walk with Christ. To the church out there that is looking to find your way, I would like to offer you some thoughts on marketing that might just change your perspective on… well… everything.

What every church needs to know about marketing…

Check back in a few days for Part 2: Marketing is Everything.

(edited)

Published on Wednesday, January 20, 2010 @ 2:20 PM CDT
2 comments

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  • Dawn Bryant

    Thank you so much for sharing. It's funny what God will do. And your story is encouraging. Almost exactly a year ago, emptiness at a job and conversations with God made it clear that a season of my life was over. A few months later, the Fortune 100 company I worked for offered a voluntary severance package. I didn't know exactly what it meant for me, but I knew the only way I was going to clear the clutter to hear the call would be to remove it. I volunteered to leave my cushy job with awesome pay and benefits to help friends plant a new church in St. Paul, MN, called Bloom. I'm now serving in leadership at Bloom as a lay pastor and a member of the creative team...all the while consulting to make ends meet and dreaming of someday helping churches and nonprofits with their marketing and communications efforts for free...it's encouraging to read your story :)

    Posted on Wed, Jan 27, 2010 @ 3:44 PM CST

  • claudiu nitisor

    Thank you for sharing this.
    Maybe you can give us a hand of help with this: http://valceaforchrist.wordpress.com/church-plant

    Posted on Wed, Mar 24, 2010 @ 9:50 AM CST

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