And then I felt bad. Because I know evangelicals feel compelled to evangelize, and that somewhere along the line evangelizing got confused with marketing, and evangelicals, much like marketing experts, really love studies, graphs, and lists that give them a really clear picture of how to appeal to key demographics. I don't know that they can help it. And as a member of the key demographic (the mysterious millenials, the illusive nones), I could maybe make up for my previous unsympathetic posture by providing something that evangelicals church leaders with a (gag) "heart for the younger generation" crave more than anything in the entire universe: lists of things we hate about church.
I mean, if you're trying to get warm twenty-something bodies in the door of your building, you really need to know what package to wrap Jesus in. I mean, we clearly aren't big fans of gun-toting, American-flag-swathed Jesus. We don't heart Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith like they did in the good old days. Men's Bible studies and ladies' luncheons just don't seem to be cutting it anymore, so what are we looking for? Or better yet, because we are a bunch of cynical postmoderns, what aren't we looking for? I know these lists abound, but people seem to really eat them up, so here are all the ways that, if you're trying to "entice" my kind, you're doing it wrong.
If you have hired a marketing specialist, you are doing it wrong.
If you've run analytics on the exact amount of tattoo, beard, and banjo that you need in order to bring in a desirable amount of Millenials, you're doing it wrong.
If you use the word "numbers" more than you use the word "love," you're doing it wrong.
If you have some guy somewhere who has a collection of graphics showing your "numbers," you're doing it wrong.
If you're concerned with a decrease in "numbers," you're doing it wrong.
If you're obsessed with said "numbers," but you also are a dutiful gatekeeper of morality, keeping certain undesirables out of your company, you're doing it wrong.
If you employ "strategies" for appealing to certain demographics, you're doing it wrong.
If you even refer to a group of people as a "demographic," you're doing it wrong.
If your services are so glossy and overproduced (even if they have beards and banjos) that they don't admit the beauty of our flawed humanity, you're doing it wrong.
If you think the church has to seem perfect and united and happy, you're doing it wrong.
If you shy away from necessary conflict, you're doing it wrong.
If it feels more like a mall than a community, you're doing it wrong.
If you refer to the church as a business, you're doing it wrong.
If you focus on quantity over quality, you're doing it wrong.
If you think that the quality of your evangelism is directly correlated to the business acumen of your church organization, you're doing it wrong.
If constraints of maintaining your massive and shiny building is placing a burden on doing the work of the Gospel, you're doing it wrong.
If your sermon sounds so rehearsed, there's no semblance of the real you left in it, you're doing it wrong.
If you're not struggling with hard things, taking up controversial issues, wrestling with the very real implication of your theology playing out in the difficult stuff of life, you're doing it wrong.
If the reason you are doing things (serving fair trade coffee, adding appealing "programs," changing the furniture/music/stock photos on your website, hiring/firing people), is anything other than "because Jesus," or "because love," or just "because it's the right thing to do," you're doing it wrong
If you are feverishly consulting lists/blogs/books that purport to let you in on the magical secrets of marketing church to Millenials, for the love of all that is good and pure in the world, you are doing it wrong!
Put down the lists. Burn your marketing strategies, your research on particular demographics, your lists, and your books. Stop trying to grow bigger, and more appealing. Start trying to grow deeper, and more honest. Do the right thing, even if it means that your numbers decrease (I know, I know, I'm asking a lot here). Be the voice of love, mercy, humility, compassion, welcome, reconciliation, even if that undermines safety, stability, and that glossy shininess that seems to throw a slick veneer over all things "church" these days.
Because here's the deal, we don't like being manipulated and we see straight through your bullshit, and lovelies, that is exactly what all this nonsense is. If something is glossy, and perfectly constructed to appeal to us, if it looks schmooth and free of conflict, we know from experience that this isn't the truth. And so then we don't trust it. Or the church. So stop it. Just do the right thing. Do the loving thing. Do the Jesus thing. It will probably not look nearly so well-produced and attractive. But if you mean it, if you really mean it, we will come. Probably not in droves. We don't really do droves (we hated droves before it was cool to hate droves). And it probably won't up your annual giving amounts to nearly the degree you would hope, because we don't exactly have money. But then, you won't need as much money, because you won't have to pay all those research and marketing experts anymore. And best of all, you will have lured in those rare and mysterious Millenials. But you won't care anymore. And that's the point.
