I attended a break-out session with Dawn Nicole Baldwin from Aspire One on branding your church. I was drawn to this session because of the significant amount of thought I have had in recent months in marketing my own business. I find this subject interesting because many churches have considered applying marketing skills to growth in the church as dirty business. Using the world’s concepts to grow one’s church is the same as taking matters into your own hands and not relying on God. What they fail to recognize, however, is that a truth is a truth whether it is applied to business or to the church, and that much can be learned in looking outside of church practices. Using manipulative practices in business is wrong just as it is in the church, and if you think that is what branding is, you don’t understand the concept.
Essentially branding can be defined as: The practice of delivering a promise that reflects the mission, uniqueness, and personality of your organization. One can think of it as the emotional aftertaste that is left once someone is placed in contact with your church. The first step in the process of branding is positioning - in other words, understanding what makes you unique. Many churches feel the call to reach all people and feel the need to equally reach out to any kind of person. In doing this they lose their focus on who, specifically, God has called them to reach. Being accepting of all people is different from attempting to reach all people, and that effort exhausts resources, confuses images, and creates a bland church. The second step is to be intentional about defining who you are. If you don’t do it, others will do it for you. This is the process of aligning the experience that people receive from your organization with the unique quality of the organization. This is delivering on the promise of what your church has to offer. Dawn used the principal that people remember 10% of what they read, 20% of what they hear, 30% of what they see, 40% of what they do, and 100% of what they feel. The church needs to focus on the touch points (service, events, web, signs, relationships, etc.) that it has with the community and be intentional about the experience of those touch points in their lives.
Afterwards, I spoke with a pastor of a fairly young, new church that was planted in the inner city. He talked of his frustration with reaching the people of the community. He said that once they come to a service they usually enjoy it and they usually stay, but the problem is getting them through the doors for the first time. Many in this neighborhood have been hurt by the church in the past, or have well developed stereotypes of Christians that act as a barrier. In thinking on the principles of this session we determine that this church was uniquely called by God to serve that community beyond simply being a dispenser of truth. To work to this calling meant to look at the church building and the church services as secondary ministries to the primary ministries that would occur outside of the doors of the church. For this church, a Friday night barbeque on the street corner was far more significant than Sunday morning. It was only in this way that they could break down the stereotypes and establish relationships that would be true to the mission that God called them to. They also need to enter this community as students rather than teachers, and listeners rather than talkers; they need to involve the people in the ministries so that they can develop ownership of the church. I think the church can learn a thing or two from the business world after all.
Hey Jeff,
So glad you enjoyed the session & thanks for coming. [And great job recapping the core points!]
So glad you’re using your gifts where it’s making such a difference.
–Dawn Nicole
Thanks for sharing the principles from the conference you attended. Branding does position a church for growth. Though I did not use the term branding in my first book, “Built by the Owner’s Design”, I did offer ways to position the church for maximum growth.
In Christ,
Danny R. Von Kanel
At times, some churches have probably become too attached to the idea of running the church like a business, and there has been a little bit of a backlash to this idea. However, your definition of branding seems entirely accurate, and since business and churches are both organizations, I think there is a lot that can be learned by examining the methods both types of organizations use. David McDaniel (http://dmcdaniel.wordpress.com/) writes a blog about Ideas About Entrepreneurship in the Church, and while I don’t agree with all his thoughts, its interesting to see someone examining those types of ideas.