The Soft Sell: What Can Jesus Do for You?

Scott Bass of the Richmond Style Weekly takes a look at church marketing in his piece, The Soft Sell. Here's some highlights:

"Churches everywhere are playing a game of catch-up, attempting to digitize a message traditionally relegated to wooden pews and onionskin Bibles. Other religions may be struggling, but Western Christianity, which makes up 80 percent of the U.S. population, is the standard bearer. The U.S. economy depends on Christianity to move goods and services; the president cites religious obligation as partial justification for invading other countries; the world’s largest retailers live and die on their performance during the Christmas season, which launches on “Black Friday.”

"The Christian church is also fighting 2,000 years of bad marketing. It’s not really even marketing, but more like a gruesome threat. Essentially, “Buy this product or die, frolic in heaven’s gardens or burn in hell.” For many churches, the need for a new, easier-to-digest message has morphed into a new nondenominational Christianity. It’s emerged over the last decade or so, and it’s less threatening. Churches preach of a more congenial God, a Jesus who can be your personal trainer, your therapist, your pal at the coffee shop. "

"People are buying it. It’s a product that does more than save you from eternal damnation. It has practical applications for the here and now. Megachurches, whose congregation sizes number in the thousands, were the first to mass-market this new product. And just as big-box retailers have made mall department stores increasingly irrelevant, so too have the giant congregations and the self-help disciples hurt smaller churches, says James Twitchell, professor of English and advertising at the University of Florida and author of the recently published “Shopping for God: How Christianity Went From In Your Heart to In Your Face.”

"The number of consumers isn’t exactly increasing, so what’s left is a stagnating market, one in which churches that conform to the needs of the consumer — hence, the emergence of self-help disciples — are rewarded with new members, tithes and all-important growth."

"With the rise of the self-help gospel, popularized by the Rev. Rick Warren’s best-selling book, “A Purpose Driven Life,” evangelical Christians have shifted their message away from combating sin and hell’s fury to one of coping, of reaching full potential, of mending relationships and broken marriages.Warren’s Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., has a school that’s taught nearly half a million evangelical pastors this new self-help gospel."

"The Rev. Joel Osteen, the latest star in that flock, epitomizes the what-God-can-do-for-you movement. A handsome, smiling 44-year-old, Osteen has grown his Houston-based church into the largest in the country, with 47,000 members. It includes a potluck of Methodists, Baptists — even Jews. He refers to these denominations as “walls that are coming down” and recently published his second book, a surefire best seller, “Become a Better You: 7 Keys to Improving Your Life Every Day.”

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