Recently I toured the World of Coke here in Atlanta. I was awestruck by their incredible marketing engine. Do you realize that according to a 2002 estimate they averaged 750 coca-cola sales PER PERSON IN THE WORLD!
The branding is incredible — even the World of Coke itself is a marketing gimmick. My brother was quoted as saying “It never fails, I always leave here craving a Coke”.
As I thought about his comment, I was left wondering, what do we do that leaves people craving Jesus? I suspect that many people cringed at the title of this article — “Marketing Jesus”, how dare you! But in reality, we are just using words — the Great Commission instructed us to go and “Market Jesus” – it just didn’t use our modern wording.
I continued to think about this, and I realized that we posses the single most awesome ‘product’ in the world. We have Jesus. It’s free, has everlasting value, and provides us all of life’s answers. It’s the deal of the century! And people are dying every day — every minute without knowing the truth.
So my question to you is how can you ‘Market Jesus’? In your church, in your community, in your world. I dare tread lightly when I say this, but the idea of putting your Sunday morning worship service on TV is dated. It’s been done. People all over the world do it. And you know what — by and large, it’s not that effective. Corporate worship is designed to be what the name says — Corporate. When you detach yourself in your living room — well, it’s just not the same. I experience this every week when I work in the church studio. We broadcast our service online. Try as we might, we just cannot rebuild that experience of being in worship.
Now, don’t get me wrong — broadcasting your service has its advantages. My question to you is this — God has empowered people all around the world to dynamically proclaim the Gospel Message on TV. They spend millions of dollars to do so. Why not let them do it? I urge you to think about how you can most use your ministry dollars to use media to reach people for Christ in ways that are NOT being done. It’s time we step out of the box and begin to look at media for what it really is — an excellent vehicle for sharing the Gospel, for offering healing, and sharing the secrets of life. Jesus says, “I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly”, let’s get that message to the world.
How do you do this? That’s the exciting news — this is a new frontier. Churches have just not used media this way before. We think of media as what we do during a service, not what we do to reach people. The world is yours for the taking — music, cartoons, commercials, radio shows, internet sites, community interest sites that tie Christ to them, interactive CD’s & DVD’s, games, movies — the list goes on and on.
I am beginning to hear of churches that use creative media plans to reach their community where they are. Every day, your target audience sits in front of a TV, behind a radio, or on the road commuting to work. They are captive. They have needs, and we have the answers. I urge you to think about how to get those answers to them. Like the old saying goes, “If Mohammed won’t go to the mountain, I’ll bring the mountain to Mohammed.” You got the mountain — now bring it!
