OK. However, that doesn’t detract from the main point: we all market. It’s necessary to any organization’s existence. Unless people know where you are and what you do, they will have a very hard time getting to you. So you market so that people know about you.
I wouldn’t call a church letting someone know where they are “marketing.” It is certainly not the kind of marketing found in the market driven church. Rather than saying, “here we are” visit us. The Market-driven church tries to look and sound as much like its customer, the proverbial “unchurched” (who used to be called unsaved before it was determined too offensive to call them such), in order that WE, human beings, might build God’s church.
The indication of who builds a church is different in Scripture. Scripture says that JESUS builds his own church. We go out as witnesses, and if we never had a placquard or sign or radio ad or anything pointing to our existence, Jesus would see to it that those who He wanted to affect through our ministry would be there.
Yes. Having a sign indicating you have a church meeting in a particular place is not bad. Having the church look and act in a way that is not the church, all in an effort to “hook” a fish, is.
Furthermore, the market-driven church is a church that is singly focussed on numbers. Numbers have NOTHING to do with being in the will of God. Yet, what is it that preachers brag about when they get together? “I had XXX baptisms last year in my church.” Preaching of the gospel is not a peeing contest. And getting more sinners under the water gains one nothing in heaven. If they aren’t hearing the true gospel, you’re just giving people very ineffective baths and worse, a false hope.
Pastors:
2preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.
3For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires (2 Timothy 4)