Shrinking mainline Protestant denominations are turning to marketing to help stem decades of membership losses and stay afloat. <\/p>\n
The United Methodist Church recently released a $20 million rebranding effort aimed at attracting younger members to the large but diminishing Protestant sect. The new ads will appear over the next four years as part of the denomination\u2019s \u201cRethink Church\u201d campaign. <\/p>\n
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has invested nearly $1.2 million in the past two years launching a similar branding effort based on the theme \u201cGod\u2019s Work, Our Hands.\u201d <\/p>\n
\nThe denominations are trying to bounce back from losses that began in the mid-1960s. \n
From 1990 to 2008 alone, mainline Protestants dropped from 18.7 percent to 12.9 percent of the population, according to the American Religious Identification Survey. <\/p>\n
The United Methodist Church has just under 8 million members in the U.S., with about 3.5 million additional adherents overseas. The median age for a United Methodist is 57, according to the Rev. Larry Hollon, the denomination\u2019s chief communications executive. <\/p>\n
The new ads highlight the opportunities for involvement within Methodist churches \u2013 from helping feed the poor to volunteering with youth basketball leagues in low-income neighborhoods, reflecting research that found that young people are especially interested in service projects. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to refocus on young people and provide them an opportunity to be a part of the church,\u201d Mr. Hollon said. \u201cWhat we\u2019re hearing is, they say, \u2018Belief connects to how I live my daily life.\u2019 If I say, \u2018I value people because I\u2019m a religious person,\u2019 then I have to demonstrate that in concrete ways. It\u2019s walking the walk, not just talking the talk.\u201d <\/p>\n
One of the 30-second ads, posted at www.10thousanddoors.org, asks, \u201cWhat if church wasn\u2019t just a building, but thousands of doors, each of them opening up to a journey that could actually change the world? Would you come?\u201d <\/p>\n
Another ad shows children reading books and asks, \u201cWhat if church was a literacy program for homeless children? Would you come?\u201d <\/p>\n
Scott Hendrickson, a marketing director for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which has about 4.7 million members, said his denomination\u2019s marketing isn\u2019t targeted to new members but current ones. The ads, at www.elca.org\/tvads, have run on cable-TV channels and in other media outlets that serve large populations of Lutherans. <\/p>\n
Like the Methodists\u2019 ads, they feature church members helping others. One shows a Senegal Lutheran mission teaching women how to start their own businesses. <\/p>\n
\u201cThrough [current members] they will encourage others to come join the church,\u201d Mr. Hendrickson said. \u201cWe wanted to reach the current members to communicate \u2026 what we do, what our mission is.\u201d <\/p>\n
What their mission is! Notice that these churches are marketing nothing more than feel-good self-righteousness, especially social righteousness, rather than the more painful personal kind of righteousness. But when it comes right down to it, they are just as fixated on works righteousness as the most legalistic fundamentalist. While decrying the political activism of the Christian right, the Christian left is even more fixated on political activism. (I grew up in this kind of church. I remember attending conventions in which the delegates voted on foreign and domestic policy issues and pretended to be Congress.) I am all for works of mercy, including Sengalese literacy projects and the like. But how sad that the \u201cmission\u201d of these churches has nothing to do with grace, salvation, or Christ, who apparently is not even mentioned in these ads.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote><\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Liberal mainline Protestants are shrinking in number, even though one would think that their moral permissiveness and leftwing political activism would make them fashionable again. So these denominations are turning to advertising: Shrinking mainline Protestant denominations are turning to marketing to help stem decades of membership losses and stay afloat. The United Methodist Church recently […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church"],"yoast_head":"\n
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