Some churches are repulsed by the idea of marketing. Other churches aren’t repulsed enough. Both of them arise out of a misunderstanding about what marketing is.
When we think about marketing, we often think about soulless, anonymous, individualistic promotion. We think the goal of marketing is bigger, better, faster, stronger. It feels manipulative. How can we sell someone something they don’t need by exploiting an insecurity they didn’t know they had?
As a dad with young kids, I have a theory that there are entire lines of baby products that were created, not because they make your life better, but because they can exploit the fears and ignorance of new parents for profit. It makes me upset when I see some parents with certain products. I’m not upset at them for having normal concerns; I’m upset at the company for exploiting them. This is bad marketing. Not because it doesn’t work; but because it does work to the detriment of the consumer.
It’s understandable that we get squeamish when churches use these types of words, tactics, or strategies. The gospel is not a product to sell; it’s the announcement of good news! It’s the power of salvation! It’s the wisdom of God!
Yes and amen.
So you’ll understand my surprise when I stumbled upon this paragraph from an essay from arguably the greatest living Reformed theologian, John Frame.
He writes,
“Nor is preaching in contrast to marketing in anything like the modern sense of the term. It depends, of course, on how you define marketing. Most critics of marketing in the church don't define the term carefully. If it simply means to make something known, to advertise, using the most effective communication available, then certainly the church should market its gospel. Christianity is a missionary faith. It is charged in the Great Commission with bringing the gospel to everyone.
If one defines marketing in a narrower sense, as using various techniques unworthy of the gospel, then we need to discuss what those techniques are, and why they are unworthy. If they are, then they are excluded from kerygma [proclamation]. In this case, the means of communication contradict the content of the gospel, and certainly 1 Corinthians 1:21 rules out any presentation that obscures that content. Again, the focus is on content, not on media in themselves. But when the media obstruct the message, they must be changed.
The church should have a dialogue on what means of communication obscure the gospel message. But simply to contrast marketing with preaching sheds no light on the issue.”
Frame’s comments are insightful. The problem with marketing the gospel is not marketing as a category but the tactics used in the marketing. Are the tactics unworthy of the gospel? Are they manipulative? Are they self-aggrandizing? These questions and more are worth asking.
The most fundamental marketing tactic is storytelling. When telling the story, who is the main character? Who is the hero? Is it a “consumer”? Is it you? Is it the church? Or is it God? While God obviously works through us, godly marketing is diligent to keep God as the main character in the story. Not the felt needs of the congregation, the profile of the pastor, or the brand of the church.
Plus, as Frame mentioned, we haven’t even defined marketing. What is marketing? Seth Godin, the godfather of modern marketing, writes in his book, All Marketers Tell Stories, “Marketing is about spreading ideas, and spreading ideas is the single most important output of our civilization.” Under that definition, every preacher is a marketer. So is every writer. The very act of spreading ideas is marketing. The only question is how effective at it are you? Godin goes on to say, “If marketers could tell a better story about the really urgent stuff—taking your medication or sending peacekeepers where they belong—we would all benefit.” It’s true. The more urgent and important the message, the more the idea deserves to be spread, the better the marketing for it deserves to be.
So now that we’ve answered, “Should the church market the gospel?” (it already is), we have to ask, “How should the church market the gospel?”
Here’s the thing: everything is marketing. It’s not just your emails, website, and social media. It’s the atmosphere of the room, the friendliness of the people, the honesty of the message, how safe everyone feels, and so much more. Marketing is only good marketing when the story being told is true. But telling a true story in a way that can be heard requires thoughtfulness and intentionality on every level. The tactics a church uses don’t matter if they’re telling a false story.
Actually, let me back up. The tactics a church uses do matter if they’re telling a false story. Whether that be in terms of doctrine, culture, practices, community, or anything else. It matters because they are spreading a false story. They are telling a lie. They are using tactics to manipulate people to attend their church and grow their platform.
Don’t ask me how I know.
But when the tactics are backed up by something that is real—the real gospel, a real community, a really good culture, real practices—then we should want to spread that idea far and wide. Churches that tell a false story with their marketing need to stop marketing, repent, and tell a true story. But churches who tell true stories need to figure this out. So do digital missionaries. Preferably, they’d work together.
Because the reality is that the internet is a mission field full of people both in and our of your church. Let me leave you with some comments from an essay by Michael Thomas Jones,
“The problem is that the culture is quite willing to press on without evangelical pastors. Because of their widespread absence from the internet at large, other shepherds step in to fill the gap. Internet culture is very decentralized, but it nevertheless has hierarchies. There are influential personalities, moderators, and admins that toil every day to shape the online conversation, and they shepherd forums, comment sections, subreddits, discord servers, and various other platforms that form up the younger generation’s epistemic community — that is, the group consensus of what we ought to believe and say. In other words, they are pastoring. They are the ones teaching young people what to read, what to think about, and policing the boundaries of acceptable discourse. They are the ones scratching the itching ears of the populace. While the youth pastor drones on about servant leadership, his teenagers are paying more attention to clips of Andrew Tate and young women wiggling their buttocks in anime cosplay.
How could we expect an aging church leadership to keep pace with the frenetic energy of meme culture? Well, by showing up, for one. One can at least try to express concern about the cultural paideia of the world system, even if one doesn’t always have the time or resources to outmatch it.”
So, it’s probably time to examine both the story we’re telling and the way we’re telling it. Are we telling a true story and are we telling it so people can hear? As Paul wrote, “How, then, can they call on him they have not believed in? And how can they believe without hearing about him? And how can they hear without a preacher? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news” (Romans 10:14-15).
Ian is an author, writer, and marketer at Endeavor. Ian has written about faith and technology, deconstruction and reconstruction for The Gospel Coalition and Mere Orthodoxy. He regularly writes on his Substack, Back Again, and is the author of Walking Through Deconstruction: How To Be A Companion In A Crisis Of Faith (IVP 2025). Ian lives in Denton, Texas with his wife, Katie, and sons, Ezra and Alastair, and is a member at The Village Church Denton.
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