Teaching, rebuking, correcting & training in righteous web design.

Church Marketing Sucks - the website

September 24th, 2004 Posted in Links

Some referrer hits are more interesting than others, for example:

Church Marketing Sucks

Let’s face it, there is a great cloud of witlessness when it comes to the Church online. In fact, there is quite a bit of ‘kitsch‘ out there that distracts, annoys and otherwise drives-away people seeking and/or serving the Lord. Like HYCW, Church Marketing Sucks (CMS) is a website dedicated to dealing with this potentially fatal affliction. This sentiment is reflected in CMS’ catchy (and effective) tag line and explained on their about page:

Frustrate . Educate . Motivate

Frustrate (transitive verb) ‘fr&s-”trAt : Something’s wrong with your church. Something’s wrong with the Church. Church marketing efforts and communication in general suck. We’ve got the greatest story ever told, but no one’s listening. The church has a problem communicating, and it’s time to change.

For example, at here at Heal Your Church Website, we’re often dealing with church websites who simply miss the point. It’s not an art project, it is about getting seekers in the door without the use of firearms and empowering members so they stay inside the door without ropes and chains.

Educate (verb) ‘e-j&-”kAt : We love the church, but it needs some help. Typos, cheesy logos, and bad clip art aren’t helping the cause. But snazzy marketing won’t save this ship, either. It’s not about being perfect, but there’s a better way to communicate. It’s authentic, it’s loving, and it knows how to spell.

Add to this spinning animated .GIFs of crosses, scrolling marquees and other indulgences. Also add to this a certain demographic within Body who likes this sort of stuff to the point of emailing me a ‘love note.’ Usually such notes inform me that I’m “against God” or “tearing down the Body.” In reality, the church website reviews here, along with many of your comments, are instead fulfilling His goal to ‘Teach, rebuke, correct & train the Body in righteous web design.’ I’m just there is now another entity out there taking on the ‘TBN school of style’ on a broader scale.

Motivate (transitive verb) ‘mO-t&-”vAt : This isn’t simply about putting butts in pews or selling glossy postcards. It’s about helping the church be the Church, and seeing lives changed as a result. If helping the church communicate better allows one person to finally glimpse the Gospel, then our work has been worthwhile. It may be fuzzy math, but God can worry about that.

Amen. I know my reviews and theologies sometimes get people fired-up, but I’ve also seen several webservants move their church websites from sucky to seriously effective. I guess I should compile a list as yet a further encouragement to those who don’t take such constructive criticism personally. Such a list might also encourage others to reconsider what it is they’re doing when they design, develop and manage their Church’s communications.

Got a related comment? Let’r rip! Meanwhile I’m adding CMS’ RSS file to my aggregator.

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  1. 4 Responses to “Church Marketing Sucks - the website”

  2. By Jim on Sep 24, 2004

    A site which was suggested as in need of upgrading is the budget operation at
    http://mywebpages.comcast.net/presone/
    and it seems to have been upgraded indeed.
    -J

  3. By michael on Nov 30, 2004

    What you say is so true and so difficult to convince people of. I would expand your points to any non-profit website that relies on volunteer labor. These same people populate newsletters with cheap clip art, too many colors, center justified text and other aesthetic horrors. But for some reason church related publications seem to draw the largest percentage of kitsch. I wonder why?

  4. By David on Dec 14, 2004

    Although “presone” has something that is often missing from a church website - depth & information.
    A lot of information is right at the top level and you can dig deeper to previous sermon and bulletins & other communications.

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