Selling Out the Church

Much of the American church has emphasized the need to be heard by the culture around it so that society will listen to what the church has to say. However, these churches often do not think about the consequences of emphasizing this thought. Philip Kenneson and James Street have found an unnerving trend in American churches that shows many yielding to marketing strategies, and the authors have dedicated their book Selling Out the Church: the Dangers of Church Marketing to reveal this. Many churches have become obsessed with marketing techniques in order to bring more people through the doors and have neglected their call to be a peculiar people, diluting the gospel in the process. Although Kenneson and Street at times overemphasize the dangers of church marketing, the American church, as well as, the international church should heed their overall message.

The fear of Kenneson and Street is that the church has seen itself as offering a product, which works when marketing Coca-Cola but should not be part of the church. On the other hand, the fear of many church leaders is that people in contemporary culture view their congregations as product, and, if one does not enjoy one church’s product, he or she will not return. Kenneson and Street instructively state, “Of course, people who themselves view the worship of the church might decide to leave such a church that refused to offer a more appealing product. But simply because there are people in society who so view the church does not mean that the church must encourage such a view.” The church must be part of the Holy Spirit’s transformation of a person. Thus, it is difficult to assist one in moving away from a consumer mentality if the church is embedded in the same mentality. As the authors explain, “If you treat people like customers, they will act like customers” (1997, p. 67).

The authors continually express that the church must be a foretaste of the kingdom of God, which is already present but still yet to come. In one place, they state that the church is called to “bear embodied witness to God’s ‘upside-down’ kingdom” (p. 71). It is difficult to buy into marketing strategies if a church is being part of God’s “upside-down” kingdom. Whereas marketing strategies give themselves to helping churches resemble the world, the church is called to be an alternative to the world.

The church continually falls into the trap of trying to meet the needs of its congregation. While it is true that there are some needs the church must meet, the needs one believes he or she has are not always legitimate needs. If the church continues to listen to marketers, it will simply be repeating “the retailing industry’s maxim: The customer is always right” (p. 73). Kenneson and Street remind the reader that “church marketers overlook that Jesus, in being faithful to his calling, also drove people away” (p. 80), and later they state, “It is noteworthy that none of the gospel accounts of Jesus’ feeding the multitudes give any hint that this miracle was demanded by the crowds; Jesus decides that they should be fed” (p. 81). The authors are correct to point out such things. All self-diagnosed needs are not always legitimate needs, and, if the church is truly following the lead of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit will meet the real needs of individuals, creating a healthier Body of Christ.

Church marketers believe that their methods are amoral, non-theological, and harmless. However, the marketers (albeit, unknowingly) are putting the church in bondage to the culture (p. 115). If the church is trying to meet the needs of the culture, it is not following the leading of the Spirit but the leading of society. The problem this creates is that “the overall purpose of the church cannot be operationalized [sic]” (p. 121). The authors continue, “If we believe that the church is to offer an embodied witness to the truth revealed in Jesus Christ, then this leaves the church with an unachievable goal—at least in the sense that it can never be completely achieved.” This is contrasted to marketers who “insist that the only way we will know if we are moving toward this unachievable goal is if we first create measurable objectives that can be reached and then set about to reach them” (p. 122). Thus, church marketers change the purpose of the church to a more reachable goal.

Kenneson and Street are fearful that the church will lapse into unfaithfulness. Although marketers like graphs and charts, the authors point out,

One cannot present a congregation with a graph that plots the church’s faithfulness to its calling to be God’s embodied witness in the world, but one can offer them one that plots church attendance, church contributions, and congregational satisfaction with the church’s programs, and then pretend that the latter is a valid indicator of the former (p. 123; emphasis mine).

Frankly, church attendance and contributions are not great indicators of faithfulness. In fact, they are often the opposite. Some of the largest churches in America have been found in scandals of embezzlement, sexual promiscuity, power struggles, unaccountable leaders, and so forth. This is not to say that these things do not happen in smaller churches, but it is to point out that faithfulness and church attendance and contributions are unrelated.

From your experience, what specifically have found you found about state of the American church that is similar to what the authors propose?

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The above is part 1 of 2 on a review of Kenneson and Street’s Selling Out the Church.

Buy the book here.

-Kenneson, P. D. & J. L. Street. (1997). Selling out the church: the dangers of church marketing. Cascade Books; Eugene.