Truth In Advertising – What Is Your Church Promising?
She showed me the box when she got home. It looked really nice…especially since it was only $10. It was a really nice wood set. Very nicely polished and looked to be pretty sturdy. Then, we opened it up.
It was the ugliest piece of junk ever. It was nothing more than flimsy cardboard and plastic. The chinese checkers part didn’t even use marbles…it was small plastic disks that looked like poker chips. We looked at the box again, trying to see any similarities between what was on the box and what was in the box. No similarities were found. Then, I looked for fine print that said some something along the lines of “actual product may vary from picture.” Didn’t find that either.
That was a blatant misrepresentation. It wasn’t what was advertised.
You ever seen a church misrepresent themselves in that same fashion? Often, churches look very inticing…they advertise themselves as having a world class children’s ministry, dynamic worship and life changing teaching. But in reality the world class children’s ministry is nothing more than volunteer childcare….dynamic worship is singing praise and worship songs from the early 90′s….life changing teaching is moving from the KJV to the New KJV.
That kind of advertising not only hurts that specific church, but it impacts all of us trying bring about life change to our culture. Why should they believe us? They’ve heard promises from churches that didn’t deliver.
Often, we project who we want to be in our advertising. That’s not advertising, that’s vision casting. The world doesn’t care about who we want to be.
Instead of over promising, we should focus on what we’re good at right now.
About the Author
Bobby Chandler Has Written 66 Articles For Us!
Bobby is the founder of ChurchKreatives and the Director of Communications at Sugar Creek Baptist Church in Sugar Land, TX. His background includes serving as a pastor, church planter, and art director at an ad agency.
