"Vegas has nothing to say, but they know how to say it," says Ed Young, Jr., Founding Pastor of Fellowship Church (my home church), "and the Church has everything to say, but typically doesn't know how to say it."
Boy is that sad but true!
Because I travel and speak at various conferences all over the United States, I inevitably find myself in "Sin City" attending one of the large tradeshows that only seems to fit in the Las Vegas Convention Center.
The "strip", as Las Vegas Boulevard is known, is festooned with neon, LED, LCD and Plasma signs by the thousands. Not to mention the marquees and huge signs on every hotel, or the mobile advertising trucks that drive up and down the boulevard with their electronic signs promoting the latest show or event.
Vegas certainly knows how to get the message to its audience, and it's like no other place I've ever been.
You know what? That's called marketing. Marketing is the word considered unspiritual by many church leaders, as it smacks of being in the world. We can be in the world but not of it, as the Bible teaches, and use marketing. What? Is that double- talk? Nope. Why not? Because Jesus used marketing.
Jesus the Marketer? According to Dictionary.com, marketing can be defined this way: "To deal in a market."
What market was Jesus in? He was in the market of winning followers. He had a product and a service, as He told parables (stories) and offered eternal life with the Father. That's about the best lifetime guarantee one can get!
Jesus had a message that He wanted others to act upon - a marketing strategy, you might say. And He used the tools of his day - mostly, the spoken word, but also a body of water from the bow of a boat as a PA system or a hillside for an acoustically beneficial amphitheatre. And people came by the hundreds and thousands to hear his pitch.
He even used the sales technique of loss-leaders to keep people from leaving when they got hungry by multiplying some bread and fish to feed thousands on at least one occasion.
Experiencing Worship, The Study
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Experiencing Worship, The Study