“What if church was a verb?” That is the question the United Methodist Church (UMC) is asking in its new advertising campaign Rethink Church. It is the second part of a campaign many are familiar with “Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors” that began eight years ago.
The Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors campaign targeted 25-54 year old “seekers”. It was developed after face-to-face meetings with George Barna and guided using data from the Gallup Organization, Percept and The Buntin Group to further refine the focus. To know more you may download the publication Living Our Promise from the United Methodist Church.
The UMC has summarized their goal for the new campaign in this statement:
Rethink Church is a major campaign launching May 6, 2009. The campaign goal is sweeping and ambitious – to invite the church and those unchurched who seek spiritual fulfillment, to become more outwardly focused and engaged in the world. The campaign seeks to offer the church, not as a place to come to and stay within, but as a base of operation for expressing faith by moving out into communities and around the globe to become part of God’s plan for world transformation.
The UMC is targeting a broad audience described as “individuals who lack a church life today”, but they have also identified a more focused group they describe in this comment:
The primary audience for the campaign is individuals who lack a church life today, primarily those 18 to 34 years old. Research shows young adults are predisposed against mainline denominations. The campaign will challenge them to think of church, not as a static institution, but as a movement of people empowered to transform the world. It will urge them to think of church, not as a noun, but as an action verb – a movement of people seeking to make disciples of Jesus Christ by gathering in buildings on Sunday, seeing the world as its parish and doing faithful things in it.
The main tool the UMC is using to reach the 18 to 34 year old audience is a new Web site called 10thousanddoors.org. It is an interesting site that uses Google’s Friend Connect as a social networking tool. It also pulls together multiple Web sites and feeds to provide current information about everything from the news to Twitter to Facebook to a directory of local United Methodist churches.
The campaign is designed to last four years with a budget of $20 million dollars. There will be 95 million media impressions over the four-year period, using everything from print and billboards to banner ads and text messaging.
I am encouraged that the United Methodist Church has recognized communication in our society is not what it was just a few years ago. People are relying on technology and “permission marketing” rather than traditional means of advertising and communication. The days of impacting our culture with a creative TV ad campaign are over.
My concern is we (yes, that includes Cornerstone Church since a portion of our budget helps fund United Methodist Communications) are building a four-year campaign that will be recognized, but not have much impact. It is designed to rely on participation from the local church. The UMC has built a set of tools that invite the church to come, to participate, to be a part of a movement. But just because the invitation has been sent, doesn’t mean the local church will come.
The Rethink Church campaign is more of a top down approach. This kind of change needs to be a groundswell; the culture needs to change from within the local church. For the word church to become a verb, we need to be pried out of our pews we have been sitting in too long and challenged by the local church leadership to move and make a difference. We need to be in the story not just watching it.
I am curious to hear what you think. Visit the Web sites below and spend some time reading and interacting and then give me your feedback. Can it work? What needs to happen for us to think of “church as a verb”?
United Methodist Communications
