Advertising Your Church (Pt. 3)

Why should your church advertise? Here are some reasons to consider to advertise:

It can create more visitors to your church. A church cannot grow without new people coming through the door. People inviting their friends is a MUCH better way to get new people coming in, but advertising can augment that.

(1) It can influence the way your community thinks of your church. Through your advertising you can attempt to shape your identity. Two problems with this: First, there are some important things (like love and life change) that are difficult to portray in advertising. Second, you can’t lie. I know you want to! You want to make your church sound amazing, incredible, perfect. But it’s not. Don’t oversell your church because when people show up they’ll see the truth.

(2) It identifies the most receptive people quickly. Like let’s compare advertising to knocking on doors. An article in Time Magazine revealed that Mormons knock on 9,000 doors for every one convert they win. Now even if I was stupid enough to be in a cult, I’d be smart enough to figure out that that’s not very effective. Advertising will hopefully bring in the most receptive people and you can work from there.

(3) It gives you the opportunity to speak to a large group at one time. A radio ad or a mailing or a billboard may give your church exposure to thousands of people at one time.

(4) It can have a long lasting value. This has surprised me. We’ve sent out postcards, and (literally) one year later have someone walk in (for the first time) on a Sunday morning holding the postcard. We also get first timers who say they came because of the radio ads, but we hadn’t done radio ads in over a year.

(5) For some people, it may be the only way you will reach them. Reaching people relationally is better, and if I thought our church had relationships with everyone in our area, I probably wouldn’t advertise. But we don’t. And I want to reach those people we don’t know. Advertising is one of the only ways I know of to do that.

Why should you advertise? There are some reasons to think through. When is your church ready to advertise? That’s our question next time. Until then, bridge may be icy.

– featured on newchurches.com