How Lessons Learned from Culturally Relevant Marketing Can Transform Evangelism Patterns

Here in the city of Portland, one of the largest American crusade evangelists is organizing a mega citywide outreach to win souls for Christ. His present campaign beats the marketing strategies of fortune 500 companies. He has people. He has money. He has volunteers. Everything is free, it is non-profit money. Everything is donated so star evangelist can afford to put on such an expensive show with no responsibilities to shareholders or venture capitalists. This is a safe business for church people. But just how much result can we reap from citywide evangelistic gang-bouts today? Is the harvest still the same as the early 80’s and 90’s when Billy Graham last wooed masses with his soft-spoken accentuation and a hard-pressed call for repentance?

One of the leading US church consultants was asked how he could describe Christians in terms of evangelism today. “I am frustrated by church people letting Billy Graham do the job for them,” he said. I can’t agree more. Billy Graham is an old man who is skating straight to heaven with angels waiting for him at heaven’s door gates. When are we going to stop waiting for Billy to come to our town and do our evangelism? When are we going to stop thinking of evangelism as multitudes gathered at crowded stadiums? Somewhere along the path, Christians need to realize that evangelism is more than a big bang task to accomplish. Somehow the light must come on for us to see that evangelism is a way of living our Christian life.

Today’s advertising patterns and marketing culture trends call for even a more urgent change in the way we do evangelism. The big crusade billboards do not work anymore- ask any average business owner in town. Television and radio commercials are losing grasp of the ever changing culture. Which crutch are we going to stand on?

I believe there is so much that churches can learn from ordinary business marketing trends to engage today’s culture with the message of Christ. It is not new information that consumers today are rejecting traditional forms of marketing. The artificial and highly scripted marketing campaign is not popular any more. Multinational corporations are becoming “the enemy of the state” so to say. The public has developed high distrust for the outrageous promises delivered by corporations on TV and other media. Consumers are sick and tired of advertising spin-offs with tactical story telling that settles for no more than empty promises. This kind of disgust is affecting not only marketable goods and services but the message of the church as well. Anything that encroaches on the public private viewing freedoms is received with contempt. This includes television evangelists and large Christian meetings infomercials

The public is turning to a new form of buying called “peer-advised buying.” Peer-based sources of information that help the public to exchange observations about experiences in the marketplace are becoming popular. The marketing manager at “3-Foot Corporation” (fictitious name) is no longer the message controller. The new marketing manager is the consumer. The consumer is found everywhere from a high school football team to a local pub. The marketing mass has become highly fragmented. Numerous sets of subcultures are screaming to be reached in their own way and on their own terms. In brief, the consumer determines how you do advertising. In other words, in the new marketing world, culture determines who buys and sells. This kind of consumer advised buying is setting trends for all kinds of public groups including church membership and product purchases.

Savvy corporations today are flocking to culturally relevant marketing. This form of marketing however does not produce quick-fix results like the mass media has always done. Its strength lies in the power to embed the products in the minds of the public, thus producing greater returns in the long run. People flock to what promotes their culture. The new culture is what people watch, read, and share. Only those companies that maximize on this knowledge will be able to reach the post mass-marketing consumer. This shift has so many implications on the way we do evangelism today. Evangelism will have to be culturally relevant to break through the clatter of subcultures that are sheltering themselves from the outside world. You find them everywhere; from myspace and facebook groups to Google Orkut communities. Rumor has it that these subcultures are creating all sorts of goods and services including the time-old economic systems such as barter trade.

One of the ways that corporations are making use of culturally relevant marketing is through product placement. Product placement advertisements are promotional ads placed by marketers using real commercial products and services in the media. Product placement appears in plays, film, television series, music videos, video games, books etc. This and many other culturally relevant marketing techniques are going to set the trend for advertising in a post mass-marketing generation. This is something that churches can borrow from. What about incorporating the message of the gospel in a movie and pay placement fees? Movies have the power to reach more sheltered houses than any international evangelist will ever step into.

So here you have it. If you are so passionate about reaching our generation for Christ, it is high time you started breathing in their space and reach them on their own terms. Or you can stick to the same old-time prophetic finger-pointing and miss the whole deal of God’s ways. Jesus was always relevant to his culture. He spoke farming to farmers, fishing to fishermen, and laws to lawmakers, Pharisees and Sadducees.

Are you ready to drop your guard and REACH?

Amon Munyaneza