United Methodists plan campaign to ‘rethink church’
The Rev. Larry Hollon, top staff executive of United
Methodist Communications, addresses the Commission on Communication in
Nashville, Tenn. At right is the Rev. Mark Conard, a commissioner from
Hutchinson, Kan. UMNS photos by Ronny Perry. |
By Susan Passi-Klaus*
Oct. 2, 2008 | NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UMNS)
What if church wasn’t just a place where people spend an hour on
Sundays? What if there wasn’t just one door into the church but 10,000?
And what if we began thinking about “church” as a verb instead of a noun?
The United Methodist Church is going to pose those questions and others
when it rolls out a new media campaign in 2009 aimed at getting people
to “Rethink Church.” The awareness campaign’s launch will coincide with
World Malaria Day, April 25.
“In the next few years, we will seek to encourage a global spiritual
dialogue,” said the Rev. Larry Hollon, top staff executive of United
Methodist Communications. “It will ask us to rethink church. We will
ask, ‘What if church were a verb and not a noun?’”
Hollon and his staff presented the “Rethink Church” awareness campaign
to the agency’s commission during a Sept. 25-27 meeting in Nashville.
The Commission on Communication oversees United Methodist
Communications, which is directing the campaign.
“What we’re going to try and get across is the idea that ‘church’
doesn’t just happen on Sundays, and ‘church’ isn’t just a building,”
said Kerry Graham, president of Nashville-based Bohan
Advertising/Marketing, which developed the "Rethink Church" campaign.
Attracting more people
The campaign is designed to redefine church as a 365-days-a-year
experience where people seeking a church community can become involved
at various levels – many of them non-traditional – such as volunteering
with groups outside the church building and even through making online
connections.
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Kerry Graham describes the media campaign under development
for The United Methodist Church.
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Graham suggests that the church population, institution and hierarchy
will need to understand and embrace the idea that it is OK for “church”
to start out as day care, a youth-group ski trip, a men’s basketball
league or something that solves a secular need, such as Habitat for
Humanity.
“Whatever entry point is comfortable for someone who may find the idea
of entering church daunting, an act of courage or a moment of high
vulnerability – that’s what church needs to be,” he said.
United Methodists are working to bring three generations into the life
of the church: baby boomers, post-moderns (also known as Gen X) and
millennials (Mosaic or Gen Y). The target audience for the new focus
will be 18- to 34-year-olds. With issues related to church relevance,
negative impressions of Christians and opportunities for involving young
people, these generations have been difficult to engage in mainline
church involvement. Church officials expect the campaign to have a
positive impact with other age groups as well.
Hollon told commissioners that the church’s mission statement, to “make
disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world,” is the
foundation for United Methodist Communications’ work. He also noted that
the new campaign will use language that resonates with the life
concerns of people who aren’t familiar with the church.
Competing for ‘mind space’
Rethinking church and denominational marketing calls for an ability
to tell the church’s stories in “many, many different ways, through many
media and with different audiences,” Hollon told commission members.
Although traditional marketing expressions such as television
commercials, magazine advertisements and billboards will anchor the
campaign, the “Rethink Church” message also will be delivered in other
ways. Cutting-edge communication tools will include everything from
United Methodist iTunes and text messaging to YouTube Methodist channels
and bumper stickers. The question for campaign architects becomes, “How
do we communicate faith in a complex, media-saturated world?”
“We face a multiplicity of media and competition for ‘mind space,’”
Hollon said. “We are living through changes in lifestyle and values in
post-modern, post-Christian culture – changes that are continuous and
require adaptation and the ability to turn on a dime.”
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Commissioners Greg Nelson
(right) and Andreas Elfving
listen to the presentation.
|
“Rethink Church” will serve as a creative addendum to the campaign “Open
hearts. Open minds. Open doors.” The church has carried out the
campaign on television, radio, billboards and other media for the past
eight years.
General Conference, the legislative assembly of The United Methodist
Church, approved approximately $20 million in funding for United
Methodist Communications for advertising and media campaign work for the
next four years. The “Rethink Church” campaign’s cost is not yet known,
and some funding for it may come from other United Methodist
Communications funds.
Challenging the church
The Commission on Communication was “very enthusiastic” about the
general concept for “Rethink Church,” said Bishop Sally Dyck, commission
president, in a telephone interview after the meeting.
The bishop, who leads The United Methodist Church’s Minnesota Area, has
supported since its inception the campaign for “Open hearts. Open minds.
Open doors.” She likes the fact that it offers churches training in
radical hospitality, which is important to revitalizing congregations
and starting new ones, she said. The campaign needs to continue, she
said.
“Rethink Church, I think, really bumps it up to another level, and it’s
actually a level that I have wanted our denomination to work on,” Dyck
said. “…Rethink Church is going to challenge every local church to think
about what the meaning and purpose of church is.”
A lot of churches define their meaning and purpose in terms of
fellowship and have “sacrificed evangelism on the altar of fellowship,”
she said.
“Rethink Church” will also challenge members to think about how they
live out church every day, in all aspects of life. “It really goes from
just receiving the gospel in kind of a passive way to …living that
gospel out in the world,” the bishop said. “It’s a challenge to not only
believe but to act and to live.”
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Bishop Sally Dyck
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The campaign will have a “wonderful challenge and opportunity for the
existing church,” but it will also invite people who have been
disappointed with the church or even hurt by it to rethink and
reconsider what church is really about, she said.
Raising awareness
As the campaign is developed, United Methodist Communications will be
seeking comments on the concept from other leaders around the church,
including bishops, general agency executives, pastors and theologians.
“Rethink Church” is envisioned as more than just a media campaign or
awareness campaign, developers say. The goal is for it to become a
movement, with results measured in terms of lives touched and
transformed, according to United Methodist Communications staff. Those
measures are being developed, but traffic on a future Web site for the
campaign will be one indicator.
“When we started ‘Open hearts. Open minds. Open doors,’ The United
Methodist Church was indistinguishable from most other mainline
denominations,” Hollon told the commissioners. “In fact, someone called
us a ‘generic’ denomination.”
The original campaign, launched in September 2001, raised U.S. awareness
of the church from 14 percent to 30 percent, according to Hollon. He
said 96 percent of those surveyed by Gallup last March now have a
positive or neutral view of The United Methodist Church.
The national search for a new advertising agency of record began in late
2007. United Methodist Communications received about a dozen proposals
from agencies across the United States and narrowed the contenders to
four.
“The Bohan Agency was far away better prepared and better versed in what
we are trying to accomplish than any of the others,” Hollon said. “They
took what we had and built on the last eight years to take us to a
whole different place."
*Passi-Klaus is the marketing associate with United Methodist Communications.
News media contact: Tim Tanton, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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United Methodist.org
Igniting Ministry
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