Strategies to Effectively Change Your Church Image

What kind of image does your church present to the community? Is it known for its tremendous buildings? Is it known for being on the historic register, or for feeding thousands each year at Thanksgiving? Is it known by its ministries? Are there any hidden statements that hinder your message of spreading the Gospel? This section will expose several overlooked matters that could be hurting your church’s community image.

Businesses in the United States currently spend more than 5 billion dollars a year on the development and implementation of their public images. By any measure, image development is a big business. Some 100,000 people are engaged in it yearly. In the early 1900s, at least 3,000 new practitioners were added annually. Why has the church not kept pace with growing technologies?

The Seven Deadly Sins

Churches must avoid the seven deadly sins of church advertising and promotion. These cardinal rules provide a checklist against which to measure any promotion and image development program. These seven sins are:

1. The sin of being a braggart. Verbosity doesn’t have a place in Christian advertising. To reach people with advertising, you must speak to their needs and show them how they can benefit from accepting Christ.

2. The sin of talking to yourself. The most creative church promotion directs its remarks to the interests of the target audience – not to the interests of the church. The choice of words must speak to the world.

3. The sin of preaching. Preachers often feel compelled to preach as they would in church. Advertising can use other, more effective ways to bring lost people into the church to hear Spirit-anointed preaching.

4. The sin of being noisy. Many churches believe they have to make a big noise in order to get people’s attention. If your church has something interesting to say about a subject or event, there is no need to set your hair on fire or stand on the church roof in order to catch their eye.

5. The sin of being sloppy. Appearance is important. In the same fashion, no one likes someone being inconsiderate. Always put your best before the world.

6. The sin of being cute. A lost person is turned-off when a church tries to be cute but appears disrespectful. Deliver your story in as straightforward a manner as possible. If you do, you will get more attention and applause from your audience than if you put on an act.

7. The sin of being dull or boring. Of all the deadly sins of church advertising, worst by far is that of being dull or boring. The church advertising campaign should enhance the message. The campaign that takes away from the church is doing more damage than good.

Image Strategy is Like Fishing

In the past, image promotion centered on identifying the target audience. Monitoring, refining, and analyzing demographics allowed the group to fine-tune its image to ensure that the center of the target was hit.

Churches today compete with more messages bombarding the listening audience than they did 20 years ago. Amazingly, the average person encounters more that 1,400 messages a day. So, what has been hurting most of our churches’ image promotion the past few years? Even though the church hits its target audience, it is in direct competition with at least 1,399 other messages to win the attention of that single viewer.

Hitting the target is not enough in today’s world. It does not ensure complete communication. To have successful communication with your audience, a firm understanding of whom, what, and where they are is required. Only when proper targeting is developed and achieved will a church be able to catch the heart of its audience.

Seven Steps to Image Placement

There are at least seven steps to strategic image placement:

1. Clarification and identification of the church’s mission statement. What does your church do well? For whom do you do it? This succinct statement serves as the flagship of the ministry. It should be concise -- not lost within larger visionary goals or objectives. Lack of clarity at this point could prove fatal. Too much diversity can destroy your intended message at the moment you are getting off the ground.

2. Audience delineation. Who is our church seeking to touch for Christ? Where are they? What are they like? What are their needs? How can your church reach them more effectively? The church’s goal is to learn how to use people’s talents and abilities in the community for the Lord. Many families join a church because they believe they will be used in ministry at that particular place of worship as compared to another.

3. Audience appreciation. Any church wanting to expand must truly appreciate the target audience and its needs. Sensitivity to the needs of a target group is paramount. Whether in ministry or ministry-related business, understanding an audience’s felt needs dramatically improves the results of your communication.

4. Image placement design. What has our church done in the past in the area of design? Has it been successful? If not, why not? If past promotions have been successful, then build on that past. For the church moving into the twenty-first century, continual development and changing of your design are required. People do not look at the same advertisement more than the number of times it takes to be familiar with it. Therefore, after that time you have lost your target audience unless you say it differently. Look for the weaknesses and strengths of past projects and build on them. Identify opportunities or growth and advancement in your work

5. Develop the right tools. Now that you have a message that is targeted toward a particular audience, how are you going to get that message out to them? Ideas such as color, form, and paper should be considered at this point. Do not try to get something for nothing. Remember, if a sloppy job is done, your results will be sloppy.

6. Implementation. When all is ready, start with a small test to see if the intended results can be accomplished. This will save your church a lot of time and money and will assure you that the plan can work. If the results are less than expected, how can careful refining eliminate any ineffective material? When refinement is completed, the results should improve.

7. Follow-up. As with anything, follow-up is always required. If your church believes it can reach a specific target audience simply by developing an appropriate image, do not continue any further in your course of action. Results are achieved when God’s people follow up with personal contacts and visits. Have a goal of reaching a certain number of families through this campaign. Then aggressively go after these people.

Dream the Dream Again

As with any ministry, no sooner is it developed and continuing than a need arises to repeat the process of doing and developing a new approach. It took courage and boldness to get this ministry off the ground. Do not allow it to die with just one project underway. Develop a new idea. Select a new audience to touch with the gospel. Minister to the needs of another group in your community. Plant a church! Be on the cutting-edge for Jesus Christ. Penetrate your entire community for Christ. Always be willing to follow through with that which the God has begun.

Adapted from The Disciples of Christ website on Congregations