From Country Parson-One theme keeps driving online conversations among Episcopalians: How can we grow the church in the face of decades long decline? It doesn’t matter what the original subject was, only moments are required to turn it toward church growth. It’s a common marketing question just like ones asked at Kmart, Macy’s, J.C. Penny, McDonald’s, and even Amazon. It’s the same question asked in every consumer products company about every consumer product. Maybe that’s why it so easily becomes our question too. Its pervasiveness in American culture makes it appear as the natural, normal, necessary question every organization must ask about everything they do. The consultants say so.
Maybe so, but not for the church. At least not for the Episcopal Church. We’re not selling a consumer product. My nonreligious buddy disagrees. You are too, he says, you’re trying to sell me a religious product with “wait, that’s not all” promises, and I’m not buying. It that’s what we’re about, he’d be right, but we are in (or should be) the business of proclaiming the gospel, the good news of God as revealed in Christ Jesus. The right question is, How can we better proclaim the gospel? It isn’t our church. It’s God’s church. We don’t have to save it. Last I heard, God was not in need of a marketing consultant. What we need is to faithfully proclaim the gospel by word, sacrament, and and hard work of living into what we proclaim.
More here-
http://countyparson.blogspot.com/2018/01/were-not-kmart-church-is-not-dying.html
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