Close Your Church for Good. Chapt. 3, Sec. 3. Some churches try public relations campaigns to improve their visibility in the community and attract people to church. Below is an example from one church I pastored, and the results we saw.

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In my first year as a pastor, our church was struggling to raise attendance, and decided part of our problem was that the community was not aware of our presence. To correct this, we went with a smorgasbord approach. Members went out and knocked on doors to invite people to church. We sent out mass mailings. We hung flyers on people’s doorknobs and left CDs of church music and sermons on their windshield wipers. At one point, we even dropped a packet of tracts and pamphlets on their lawn.

About a month into our community awareness campaign, I received a letter from a man who, as a result of our efforts, had now become aware of our church.  Though I no longer have the letter, here (with some of the language removed) is essentially what he wrote

Stop bothering me! Your people knock on my door when I’m trying to enjoy time with my family and they just want to talk about God and your Bible. After I tell them to leave, I find they’ve left trash about Jesus and attending your church on my doorstep. A week later, there’s more trash on my lawn. When I get the mail, I find junk mail from your church. At the park last week, you left crap on my windshield.

Aside from all the litter you’ve left lying around, and the trees you’ve destroyed getting all this printed, and the  money and time you’ve wasted distributing it, I feel like I’m being stalked. If this doesn’t stop, I’m reporting you and your church to the police. Leave me alone!

I remember feeling quite indignant about this letter. I thought, “If he doesn’t want the stuff, why doesn’t he just throw it out? Why take the time to write such a nasty letter? Does he write a letter like this to local businesses when they send him junk mail or telemarketers interrupt his dinner? I doubt it!” I took the letter to the church board and showed it to them. We all decided that one letter does not reflect the views of the entire community, and we should disregard it. That is what we did, and continued with our campaign. We never did hear from the police.

Looking back, however, I think the man was right. Though it’s true we were raising our “brand recognition” in the community, and our campaign was generating awareness, we were getting noticed for all the wrong reasons. In our attempt to reach the world, we had adopted methods of the world which contradicted our message.

It’s been a while since I made a post on the progress of my book, Close Your Church for Good. This is because several of the chapters I had written got pulled out for a future book, and others got rearranged. I guess this is why books don’t get written online like this…

So below is a section near the beginning of “Chapter 3.” The beginning of the chapter shows how most churches in most communities would not be missed if they were to close. I already made two posts (Part 1 and Part 2) on this back in July. We pick up there. 

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Many believe the primary problem is that of image and perception. We believe we are misunderstood. We know our hearts and our motives, and how we want to help people learn and live the truth of the Gospel, but for some reason, the average person on the street has a somewhat negative perception of the church. They read about church corruption and pastoral sex scandals in the newspapers, and they don’t trust us. Some have tried attending a church, but got burned. They are tired of being asked for money. As a result, the average person thinks the church is greedy, hypocritical, unforgiving, judgmental, harsh, and selfish.

Of course, the average churchgoer believes just the opposite. People who attend church believe their fellowship is warm, friendly, gracious, generous, and compassionate. The fact that non-churchgoers think differently shocks us. We are certain that people who distrust church would like it if they just visited ours. Maybe they had a bad experience in another church, or as a kid when they were growing up, but things are different now. Our church is not like those other churches.

But how can we get them to visit if they don’t trust churches in general? People won’t come to church when we invite them unless they first begin to change their perceptions about the church. How can this be done if we can’t them to attend?

Typically, a church faced with this dilemma embarks on a public relations campaign borrowed straight from the pages of Corporate America’s User Manual. When Toyota recalls millions of cars for sticky gas pedals, they simultaneously air commercials on television about all the safety awards they have won. When a BP oil rig spews oil in the Gulf, Florida rolls out advertisements about how their beaches are still safe and clean. When the antenna on the new iPhone doesn’t work properly, Apple sends all users a coupon for a free case.

So churches do the same thing. To counteract our negative image in the public arena, we develop slogans like “First Community Church: The Perfect Church for People Who Aren’t” or “Grace Church: A Hospital for the Hurting.” Then, once the image and slogan are developed, the campaign really begins in earnest. People are invited to come as they are, and reminded that we’re all sinners on the road to change. Signs and banners are displayed around the church so the members understand (and hopefully live) what is taught. Sermon series are preached on the themes of forgiveness and love. Air time is purchased on television and radio to run commercials about how great and loving our church is.

Then we sit back and wait for the people to arrive so we can really begin to show them how loving we are.

The problem, however, is that the public relations campaign doesn’t always work. If anything, the perspective of outsiders only gets worse. At least, that’s what happened in my church.

Close Your Church for Good. Chap 2, Sec 2. How did church become so complex? It didn’t start that way; it evolved that way. But we can become simple again.

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Christianity began quite simply. Yet over the years, it has gone through various cycles of gaining complexity until a renewal movement arises, and brings a portion of the church back to simplicity.  These cycles are nearly always the same. Initially, the movement begins with a few simple but profound ideas which could be taught and learned in minutes. The people who hear these ideas are so moved by them, they are able to remember, practice, and teach them to others. 

Within a few years, however, the movement begins to morph. Questions get asked and answered and innovative practices become standard traditions. Cultural influences are incorporated to appeal to the masses but soon become indistinguishable from the movement itself. Eventually, the movement begins to slow as the required knowledge and expertise to live and function within the movement becomes so great, it takes not a few minutes, but a few years to understand and grasp the ideas and practices of the movement. The two or three initial truths which spread so rapidly at first are developed into massive systems of beliefs and practices, complete with books, specialized leaders, and training centers where new initiates spend years of study before they are allowed to go out and teach others also.

This continues until someone comes along and simplifies things again. Then a new movement begins bringing reform, renewal, passion, excitement, and generally, an explosion in evangelistic activity. Frequently, these new ideas, new practices, and the people who teach them are condemned as heretical by the established and well-grounded movement. But over time, the new movement either dies out, or follows the general pattern above, and is eventually incorporated into the well-grounded and established movement. When this happens, new books are written, new explanations are provided, new training centers open, and the ever-growing mass of required knowledge to live and operate within the movement expands.  Eventually, a new movement begins and the process starts all over again.

These spiritual movements often center around freedom. Those who are involved in the movement believe that the Scriptures contain very little about how church should be done. The Scriptures do tell us, however, what the church is, and what the church is supposed to do. As long as we understand this, we can be as free, flexible, and creative as we desire.

Close Your Church for Good, Chap 2. Sec 1. Here is the new introduction to chapter 2. I’ve done major revisions to Chapter 1 also, which will only appear in the final e-book version.

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What is the church supposed to be and do? It depends on how you define church. But getting a definition is not as simple as looking up a verse in the Bible, asking your pastor for a definition, or looking one up in a theological dictionary. Even where it is defined, such definitions tend to be full of complex ideas and theological jargon which require further explanation. For example, a typical definition of “church” in many theology books reads something like this:

Church (Gk. ecclēsia) is the universal body of believers that functions under the headship of Jesus Christ and meets regularly in local assemblies to carry out the Great Commission through observing the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper and listening to the preaching of the Word of God, all for the edification of the believer and the evangelism of the world.

There’s really not much to disagree with in such a definition. It is when you start to discuss what the various terms and words mean, however, that disagreement begins. How can the church be both universal and local? Who is a believer? What do they have to believe and who gets to decide?  What does it mean for Jesus Christ to be the head? Should we have pastors and priests or not? Why are baptism and the Lord’s Supper called ordinances? What kind of baptism is required? How and when should people be baptized? What exactly constitutes “the Lord’s Supper”? How often should it be observed? Who gets to do the preaching? How long should the preaching be? What does it mean to preach “the Word of God”? Also, this specific definition says nothing about leadership, organization, church government, denominations, our role in politics, and many other issues that are important to the average church.

The theology books generally attempt to answer these sorts of questions. And before you know it, an attempt to understand what the church is and what the church does requires detailed knowledge of dozens of books and an advanced educational degree or two. The “basics” of church seem to require a lot of advanced study and research. The basics are not so basic after all.