Posted on 01/05/2009 12:39:29 PM PST by Between the Lines
Running a successful church requires cutting-edge marketing and branding as much as it does innovative preaching and ministry.
The Fellowship at Celebration Baptist Church has learned that the hard way during the past decade as a similarly named congregation has become synonymous with the word "Celebration."
As a result, the East Arlington congregation is changing its name on Thursday to FaithBridge Church.
That's something church member Jaime Brasseit said she's had to pray to accept.
"I liked 'Celebration,' and I kinda wish we had kept 'Baptist,' " Brasseit, 22, said after a recent Sunday morning service.
But Brasseit said she knows the name change - including dropping the reference to the congregation's Southern Baptist denomination - is necessary.
Necessary because another congregation in town - Celebration Church pastored by Stovall Weems - has grown so big, so fast in the past decade that it simply owns that name, said the Rev. Paul White, pastor of the Baptist group.
And "Baptist" is being dropped - the word only - because denomination names are a turn-off to the mostly younger, largely unchurched singles and families White and his flock are trying to attract, he said.
"Most people think we are a satellite of the other Celebration," White said. Others told him they wouldn't come if they knew it was a Baptist church.
Marketing religion
The Fellowship's identity-altering situation reflects an ongoing trend that sees American congregations becoming ever conscious and purposeful in selecting and marketing their names, said Mara Einstein, an expert on church marketing and branding and a media studies professor at Queens College in New York.
It all started in the 1970s with the explosive growth of megachurches that scrapped denominational names or affiliations to woo generations that had become disenchanted with the trappings of traditional, organized religion, Einstein said.
(Excerpt) Read more at jacksonville.com ...
Only in the American south are churches a business.......
The Church was never instructed to attract the world.
The church was instructed to go out and get the world and bring it to Jesus.
I see this everywhere.. North, South, West, Canada; have you ever been to the Vatican? It is like a street carnival outside it.
(shakes head slowly) :-(
I think that person means "bringing more people to put cash in the collection plate". I am a Southern Baptists, attend a Southern Baptist church that I would recommend to anyone wishing to hear preaching from the Book, and I'm utterly disgusted at the idea of "camouflaging" a church so that people won't know to which denomination it belongs.
I don’t know anything about this particular church, but changing their name doesn’t seem like such a big deal, as long as they don’t try to change God’s Word.
In Corinthians 9, Paul said:
20And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law;
21To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law.
22To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying to understand people’s perspectives and tailoring a message for them, as long as the goal is to win them to Christ. If it’s to fill seats and preach a PC gospel, then obviously that’s the wrong way to go. Churches should examine themselves and see if they’re being effective. We’re supposed to produce fruit.
Ping!
Coming to a LCMess parish near you (iffin’ it ain’t already there...)
I’m always appalled by the lack of class some churches have to be advertising on billboards in the south, I think they’re mostly non-denominational churches fighting for market share in soul saving. Not too many non-denominational churches in the northeast.
“Marketing religion”
Simil justus et peccatore
You can’t sell a product that people don’t want.
"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. -- Matthew 5:13-16
“they’re mostly non-denominational churches”
Funny that, when you look into their theological underpinnings, said NonDenom congregations are overwhelmingly Baptist (altho of a liberal stripe)
Another of the “Church for $$$$$$$” crowd.
“The church was instructed to go out and get the world and bring it to Jesus.”
The church is instructed to be a witness to the world. When people believe that witness and trust Christ, and are regenerated, then they have a place in the church. Then they will require no church that tries to equalize itself with the world in order to attract people.
The world hates the church because it hates Christians . . . because it first hated Christ. If one can found a church that the world thinks is okay, then it must not really be a Christian church.
Is Matthew 5:13-16 being used to suggest that the church is to be more like the world to attract the world?
Not already here. We did good in selecting a new pastor. Now if we can keep the name (St Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church), well...
So your church has "Southern Baptist" in it's name or are they just camouflaging themselves as other Baptists?
“The church was instructed to go out and get the world and bring it to Jesus”
But not by making it palatable and inoffensive. When the public face of the church changes to reflect the world, that church has it bass-ackwards.
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