It’s a strong statement to make, but it seems like the church today is being increasingly forgotten and irrelevant to the average American.

I think many people would agree that the church today in America is not growing. Instead it seems to be rapidly becoming irrelevant and forgotten. We’ve tried to be socially relevant and care about the poor and needy. We’ve tried to be theologically correct. We’ve tried to be entertaining. And the theology and caring and attempts to keep from being boring are all praiseworthy. But I think that there is an emerging trend among certain secular marketing people, who have recognized the changing tides in America, and are responding effectively. And their commentary and perspectives are very revealing. My premise is that we have an incredibly awesome message of salvation which every individual needs, but that not every individual realizes that they need. Additionally, Americans have become extremely effective at fulfilling their needs through acquisitions of new things, which has distracted them from realizing their true needs. But competing directly with the bombardment of marketing and sales pitches everyone receives daily is not effective or efficient. The average American has been able to fulfill all of their basic needs for some time now. So the enterprising salesman and marketer has had to convince us of new “needs” or wants. The invention of the radio and then TV made these offers and message easier to spread and communicate, and we have been “sold” on more and more wants over the years. Increasingly more entertaining, memorable, or unique advertisements have been created for the sole purpose of convincing us to buy more. Why have they increased so rapidly? Because they are a victim of their own success. They work, so we do it more, but the more we do, the less the consumer pays attention. We’ve created so much marketing and advertising clutter that we have to keep updating, changing, and add to it to get attention the next time around. Where one flier worked before, you now need 3-4 fliers with just the right funny images or graphics to grab the attention. But when everyone tries this, then everyone has to do something even more to get past the clutter they are creating by creating more to get past the clutter. Do you see the cycle? Seth Godin quotes Sergio Zyman concerning two of the most popular TV commercials by Coca-Cola ever staying, “I’d like to teach the world to sing and Mean Joe Greene…[these TV ads ] sold not one more bottle of Coke. They entertained and got attention, but translated into no incremental revenue.”

“I’d like to teach the world to sing”

“Mean Joe Greene”

So while more entertaining advertising and even popular advertising works for a time, eventually even this begins to lose it’s effectiveness in the clutter of today’s advertising world. Not only is it entertainment no longer a guarenteed way of marketing, name recognition isn’t either. Godin writes about Kmart, “Kmart has plenty of awareness. So what?” Marketers and salesmen are realizing one important thing, in our world of too much advertising, you can try to force your way into the hearts, minds, and short attention span of the American, but it’s losing it’s effectiveness and becoming prohibitively costly to do so (consider the cost of a Superbowl commercial). So in the church’s attempts to get the Word of God out, we creat just one more spam message in our email inboxes, one more commercial break in our TV shows, and one more peice of junk mail in our mailboxs. And this same idea can be applied to many aspects of the church, whether our preaching styles, our fliers, our programs and ministries, and more. The only thing that has allowed the current methods to work thus far is that the means of doing so are being made cheaper thanks to technology, but each new technological method eventually reaches a limit of effectiveness. But the good news is that there are alternatives. Let’s consider other ways of sharing the message of Christ, so that the uninterested non-believer doesn’t see simply another spam email, junk mail flier, or TV commercial.

The church has not simply been forgotten, it has become unimportant to the needs and the desire of the American consumer, and one more option in a buffet of religious options.