Monday, August 13, 2007

Church Marketing?

This is a quote from an article by Al Mohler. He is the president of Southern Seminary in Louisville, KY and a prominent voice for the Southern Baptist Convention. The subject of the article was not directly what I am posting but is a response to a book written by George Barna called "revolution". Here he is pictured to the right. The half face makes him look like Nelson from the show Home Improvement. Can't you just smell the irony!? Kidding - that has nothing to do with the article... here goes.

"In God in the Wasteland, David F. Wells points to the problem of approaching the church from the angle of marketing. "A business is in the market simply to sell its products; it doesn't ask consumers to surrender themselves to the product. The church, on the other hand, does call for such a surrender. It is not merely marketing a product; it is declaring Christ's sovereignty over all of life and declaring the necessity of obedient submission to him and to the truth of his Word. When the church is properly fulfilling the task it has been assigned, it is demanding far more than any business would ever think of asking prospective customers. Simply put, the church is in the business of truth, not profit. Its message--the message of God's Word--enters the innermost place in a person's life, the place of secrets and anguish, of hope and despair, of guilt and forgiveness, and it demands to be heard and obeyed in a way that not even the most brazen and unprincipled advertisers would think of emulating.""

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