Crossing from "Church Marketing" into "Money Changing"

"$2500 - We advertise our conference in numerous magazines, seminaries, state publications, etc. We would love to list you as one of our partners as our premier sponsor in all of our advertisements. This is a great way to diversify your marketing" (from 2010 FBC Jax Pastor's Conference Promotions Plan)

*****

This is indeed the "church marketing" age. Churches large and small are employing techniques used for decades by businesses, to get the word out to the community about their ministry, to attract new prospects, and to entice people to come to their church.

This trend is accelerating, as mainline denominations like the SBC are losing members, and they see younger church members fleeing to the non-denominational churches, and there is more and more competition between a rapidly growing number of churches over a slowly growing "consumer base" of Christians. Mega churches especially are trying to stall this membership loss through spending hoards of money - money given by God's people for "ministry" - on things like marketing, advertising, and promotions to attract more nickels and noses to their church.

First Baptist Church Jacksonville was on the cutting edge of this trend back in the '80s as they began to advertise - putting billboards up around Jacksonville, and later, buying TV commercial time.

There are even consulting firms that exist today catering exclusively to the "marketing needs" of churches - offering services including website design and hosting, design of advertising and promotional pieces, design of sermon series and associated promotions and advertising. They will assist churches in applying the business model of market analysis and strategies: branding of churches (and pastors), identifying strategies to target specific market segments, etc.

While this is distasteful to many in Christendom, its nothing new and it has been embraced by almost all denominations.

But FBC Jax in the last 3 years seems to have broken new ground in this area.

It is one thing to implement marketing principles within a church to help it achieve its mission or to simply grow - which some have criticized as being unscriptural at its core - but its another thing altogether when the church employs marketing techniques to RAISE REVENUE through advertising within the church walls.

That is precisely what FBC Jax has been done with the Pastor's Conference - the very conference that was started nearly 30 years ago by Jerry Vines to help minister to pastors and let them see how things are done at FBC Jax - access to these pastor's eyes, ears, and wallets is now being sold.

They have gone beyond using church marketing services of the A-Group to entice people to come, and now have employed marketing AND promotions firms to assist them in SELLING advertising WITHIN the walls of the church to raise revenue by selling access to the eyes and ears of the attendees sitting in the pew.

For the past 2 Pastor's Conferences under Mac Brunson, an Atlanta-based marketing and promotions firm, called Conexus, has actually SOLD advertising "promotions packages", ranging in prices of $1000 to $12,000. What FBC Jax is selllng in these packages includes:

- display of ministry name in the image screens of the main auditorium

- display of videos highlighting the ministry on the image screens

- "Emcee" recognition of the ministry from the pulpit

- plugs for the sales of CDs

- placement of ministry logos on the church website

- listing of the ministry on the conference website

- mentioning of name in post-conference emails

And this is just the start.

This year, they've become even more brazen in the promotions for the 2010 Pastor's Conference, as now they are trying to sell for thousands of dollars the privilege to place the name of a ministry on bottled water, pens, and conference bags. Even the mentioning of a ministry name from the pulpit is "negotiable", according to their website.

Do the people of FBC Jax really want their leadership charging other Christian ministries $750 for the simple privilege of occupying an 8' x 10' section of our foyer to put up a display table? Is that what the faithful people did 20 and 30 years ago when they gave sacrificially to pay cash to build the RLA and Main auditorium: so Mac Brunson and the A-Group could then sell promotions packages in the auditorium? Did the people of FBC Jax give money to purchase image screens and all of the top-notch audio-visual equipment so Trey Brunson could sell to Christian ministries for thousands of dollars the privilege of displaying their ministry logo or so the "emcee" could speak the name of a ministry to the audience after they have negotiated the appropriate fee with Trey and Maurilio?

I don't know about you, but as a Southern Baptist, and knowing the influence that FBC Jax has, and the respect that Mac Brunson has with churches all over the SBC, I'm worried when I see FBC Jax breaking new ground in this area. What a terrible precedent that I hope others don't follow.

In a few upcoming articles I will discuss some of these FBC Jax tactics to raise revenue, why they are a terrible idea, and I will contrast this with how the Southern Baptist Convention handles the matters of promotions and vendors at their annual convention. Instead of FBC Jax having something to teach the SBC, its the other way around in this case.

Until the next article, I will leave you with a Homer Lindsay, Jr. quote:

"God's plan was never for man to use worldly schemes to raise money for the spread of His message. God did not plan for His churches to have sales, dinners, raffles or bazaars to raise money...Such schemes are a shame and a disgrace to the church and certainly can never be pleasing to the Lord" (Homer Lindsay, Jr, "Spiritual Helps for the New Member", 1969).

Did Homer say that? You better believe he did. And if he were here today, he'd say it again.

Guest Blogger: A Plan for Mediation

Readers: below is an article appearing today on the Wartburg Watch by a guest blogger, attorney Ralph E. Cooper from Waco, Texas, who has agreed to allow me to publish it here in its entirety also. For more background on this article, visit Wartburg Watch here.

Many thanks to Ralph for writing this post to speak his mind on these matters, and to be willing to share it with the world.

Guest post by:

Ralph E. Cooper, Ph.D., Attorney and Mediator, lifelong Baptist

"The following is my suggestion for resolving the dispute between First Baptist Church Jacksonville, FL, and Tom and Yvette Rich; Mr. Rich is the blogger and host of the FBC Jax Watchdog blog. This suggestion is made by one with both a Ph.D. in Psychology with graduate study in conflict resolution, and a law degree. I have been involved in mediation or similar conflict resolution work for approximately 40 years.

I believe that onus to resolve and settle the lawsuits is on Rev. Mac Brunson and the leadership of FBC Jacksonville. My reasoning is as follows: First, the actions complained of in the lawsuit were initiated by Rev. Brunson and the church. Second, the approach taken by the church and Rev. Brunson has not worked. The blog is still active; it is getting national attention; and Rev. Brunson is gaining a negative national reputation, except among other authoritarian pastors and denominational leaders. Third, without resolution, the longer the suit is active, the more adverse the consequences for Rev. Brunson and the church, and could include the church losing membership and donations and Rev. Brunson losing his pastorate.

Given that continuing in the present approach is not being effective and is costly, as Paul suggested, let me show you a better way, the way of love and not the way of law and retribution.
First, initiate settlement discussions. Rev. Brunson and church leaders should ask their attorney to set up a mediation through Mr. Rich’s attorney, and offer to pay for the mediation. Allow Mr. Rich’s attorney to suggest the mediator, subject to approval by the church’s attorney, and offer to pay the mediation fee.
Second, at the mediation, the church, represented by a lay representative and by Rev. Brunson, should seize the initiative by:

1. Apologizing for statements about Mr. Rich and for the actions against him and Yvette. Suggested language: “I am sorry. It was wrong for us to do that and it was a wrong-headed approach to your efforts to hold a Christian brother accountable to his own teaching.”

2. Offering, as a part of an agreement for Mr. Rich to drop the suit against Rev. Brunson and the church, to do the following:

a. Admit that there was and is no evidence of anything criminal by Mr. Rich such as stalking Mrs. Brunson or stealing mail, and no evidence of any sin against you or the church in the portions of the blog written by Mr. Rich.

b. Pay Mr. Rich’s legal fees and expenses as it relates to the suit against Rev. Brunson, from Rev. Brunson’s personal resources.

c. Pay for counseling for Mr. Rich and his family, by a counselor of their choice, due to the pressure your attacks on him have caused.

d. Remove the trespass warnings against Mr. and Mrs. Rich, so that they may visit their friends or attend an event at the church without retribution.

e. Insist that the deacons and church rescind the infamous resolution.

f. Repeat the apology before the congregation on Sunday morning., including a statement that Mr. Rich’s blog was not gossip, nor slander, nor cowardly, but an attempt to hold Rev. Brunson accountable to his own teaching and to the Biblical witness. This apology should be made by Rev. Brunson, personally.

g. Ask the lay leadership to restore the bylaws to what they were before and to find ways to make the business of the church more transparent and accountable to the membership.

h. Pledge to being more available and open to the members of the congregation as their pastor and to listen humbly to their comments on your pastoring and preaching, such as by holding a weekly or bimonthly “town hall” type meeting to hear their comments. An alternative would be a pastor-church relations committee that could take comments and forward them to you while protecting the identity of members offering comments. Of course, such comments must be answered publicly to the extent that respect for privacy allows.

Third, carry out any agreement in good faith as if you were trying to outdo yourself in reaching out in love to a Christian friend.

Fourth, abjure any church discipline process in the future against those who comment or raise questions in a civil manner, whether anonymously or otherwise, and be responsive to them, at least by answering gently.

The above suggestions do not deal with all of the issues that the blog has addressed, and it is unlikely that some issues can be resolved at this time without great expense and disruption. However, the spirit of reconciliation must be shown. It may also be wise to review the unresolved issues to see whether some of them, such as family members on the church payroll, could not be resolved over time.

I believe that once such an offer is on the table, it will be incumbent upon Mr. Rich to similarly apologize for some of the blog entries or for some of the words and tone in the blog entries, and to offer, after publishing the agreement (without any crowing), to suspend the blog, except perhaps to occasionally post an entry about how the agreement is being carried out, hopefully well, and about other actions consistent with the spirit of the agreement.

Such is the more excellent way to respond to a lawsuit, the way of love. Usually, it is also the least disruptive and least expensive way to resolve a lawsuit, and it can result in restoration instead of resentment. "

Ralph E. Cooper, Ph.D.
Attorney and Mediator

First Baptist Files to Dismiss Lawsuit

Jeff Brumley of the Florida Times Union has an article in today's paper (9/18/09) reporting the response by First Baptist Church Jacksonville to the lawsuit claiming defamation and fraud, misrepresentation, and abuse of process in the outting of this blogger and subsequent "smear campaign" taken by the church. First Baptist has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit based on church/state issues.

First Baptist Seeks to Dismiss Blogger's Suit

Interesting paragraph from the story, my emphasis:

"Ruling on whether church officials properly or improperly barred blogger Tom Rich and his wife from the premises or made defamatory statements about him would 'require excessive entanglement in church policies, practices and beliefs' on the part of the court, the Sept. 9 motion states."

Very interesting, and not surprising. However, the lawsuit doesn't have anything to do with church policies and practices, and doesn't really have anything to do with them barring us from FBC Jax. It has to do with the circumstances surrounding a criminal investigation being opened by the JSO resulting in subpoenas, and for defamatory statements made by Brunson to the newspaper about my mental health.

I would make one response to Brumley's article, where he says:

"From August 2007 to fall 2008, Rich published an anonymous blog critical of First Baptist Pastor Mac Brunson, slamming everything from his preaching and administrative style to decisions to open a church school and satellite campus...."

I would characterize the issues raised on the blog as these:

- Brunson's accepting of a $307,00 land gift from a wealthy church donor just weeks after arriving in Jacksonville, and then airing a commercial for the relatives of that donor in the middle of a sermon. I have asked Brunson to disclose this gift to the congregation, and explain it to the church congregation, and how this is acceptable in light of his own pastor's guidebook recommending pastors to not accept large gifts or live in executive homes;

- the change of church bylaws in December 2007 significantly changing the governance of the church, without anyone in church leadership explaining what these changes were, and why they were made. Changes including forming a discplinary committee, adding a clause that members forfeit their rights to bring legal action against the church, and removal of a clause that allows the church membership to call for a special business meeting. This blog has called for the leadership to explain these changes to the congregation.

- Jim Smyrl's inflammatory comments about Catholics - calling them a "cult" on the church blog, and from the pulpit, referring to Catholic priests as "cult leaders", and calling for FBC Jax members to confront their Catholic friends with the "truth" that they are "living a lie" (someone please call Sean Hannity so he can stop living his lie);

- the selling of "promotions packages" to Christian ministries to raise money during the Pastor's Conference - requiring ministries to pay $750 to put a display table up in the church, and charging up to $12,000 to ministries to purchase "ads" on the image screens and for the privilege of mentioning their ministry from the pulpit. The church is doing it once again this year, for the 2010 Pastor's Conference, even going so far as trying to sell the privilege of putting someone's name or ministry on bottled water or conference bags for $1000.

- outrageous fund-raising efforts by Brunson where he demanded his congregation to "give a million in two weeks" for "emergency" facility repairs, most of which were not emergencies...demanding the people give the million dollars under threat that their decades long tradition of being debt free would be broken.

- using the church website to advertise non-church functions like next year's "Trip Down the Danube with Mac and Debbie Brunson", an expensive luxury river cruise for the very rich;

- bullying and boorish behavior by Brunson in the pulpit, including: calling FBC Jax a "hotbed of legalism", praising God his congregants didn't get a raise, expressing hope that FEMA doesn't help Jacksonville if a hurricane hits, declaring God to be the direct cause of 9/11 and our economic collapse to punish Americans, and accusing those who disagree with him on the doctrine of tithing to be "doing the work of Satan". Too many examples of Brunson's poor pulpit behavior to even list here, but have been documented on the blog, and that citizens of Jacksonville have witnessed in the church broadcasts on TV-12.

Welcome to the IMB Missions Conference....Unless....

Update: Around noon today (Tues), we received word via FBC Jax's attorney that the trespass warning for my wife is still in full force and effect. She is still banned from the premises - cannot attend the mission service without threat of arrest. No reason was given for the threat that she poses by her attendance at a missions appointment service.

Readers: Wednesday night 9/16, FBC Jax is hosting the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) International Missions Board (IMB) Mission Appointment service. Scores of IMB missionaries will be commissioned to their places of service around the world in this service. This is a HUGE deal, and I commend Mac Brunson and FBC Jax in hosting such an important event for the first time at FBC Jax. According to the IMB website, there will be testimonies given by missionaries being appointed, and a sermon by IMB President Jerry Rankin.

This appointment service is open to the public, and is of great interest to SBC church members all over the country. Sister SBC churches here in Jacksonville will have people present.

However, I want my readers to know that I have contacted the church to get their answer on whether my wife is allowed to attend. As I have reported on this blog, my wife was wrongly issued a trespass warning by the church administration for the alleged "sin" of her "associating" with me, a member who was the author of a blog about FBC Jax. Yes, she has been banned from the church property under threat of arrest for the last 9 months for the phony charge of associating with me, her husband.

Immediately after FBC Jax messengers Blount and King dropped off my list of 16 sins last November at my doorstep, along with the trespass warnings - one for me and one for my wife, I wrote FBC Jax and asked them to rescind those immediately as they were totally unnecessary and coersive. But their response was they are "in full force and effect" until we would agree to meet with their discipline committee. We never came to terms for the conditions of the meeting, and we have since left FBC Jax, as my readers know.

Since that time, we have complied with the trespass warnings. As I have reported on this blog, my wife even sat in her car outside the church in December waiting for our kids to get out of their programs to comply with the trespass warnings - until we found a new church home.

But now my wife and I are both members in good standing at a sister SBC church in town. As many of you know, my wife is Hispanic, and a few weeks ago after hearing some reports from missionaries at our church of their work in South America, she has expressed some interest in eventually going on a short-term missions trip where her bilingual skills, and her very loving, caring spirit could be used to minister to people in need.

So I sent an email to John Blount, FBC Jax Church Administrator, last Thursday, kindly asking him if the trespass warnings were still in effect for Yvette and me - that we have a desire to come to the IMB missions conference.

I never received a response. Perhaps their lawyer has told them not to communicate with me at all because of the on-going lawsuit.

Fair enough.

I sent a follow-up to Blount yesterday (Monday), letting him know I would NOT attend, but that my wife still may want to attend, and to please let me know if she can, and if not, for what reason she cannot. I also let him know I contacted my lawyer to contact their lawyer in an attempt to get a response from FBC Jax on the trespass warnings.

Still, no response as of this writing.

Will FBC Jax finally try to do the right thing in this matter? Are they really going to keep my wife from attending a missions conference? Does Jerry Rankin and other IMB trustees who are in town this week know that their host church is banning a Hispanic woman who might be a future short-term missionary, from attending this service for no good reason? What must my wife do to have her trespass warning removed? Must she divorce me? Must she openly say she opposes this blog? Maybe if she confesses and repents of her "sin" of "associating with" her blogging husband?

Whatever the FBC Jax response is in this, I promise I will post it here on this blog site.

Let's hope and pray they will do the right thing, the loving thing.

"The Emperor's New Clothes", aka, "Senior Pastor Syndrome"

The blogger "Junkster" posted a hyperlink here on this blog to an article entitled "Senior Pastor Syndrome", written by a blogger who goes by "Prodigal John", and writes an insightful blog entitled "Stuff Christians Like".

I thought the "Senior Pastor Syndrome" article was so relevant to issues I blog about, that I contacted Prodigal John to ask him if I can post his article here in its entirety, and he agreed. In this article PJ discusses how Senior Pastors can catch "CEO Disease".

Symptoms of this disease? A pastor who is "untouchable", who surrounds himself with "yes men", has a "board of trustees" that he selects and who alone hold the power to call for his dismissal, who has ministers on staff that tell the congregation that to criticize "Pastor" is to criticize Jesus Christ, whose sermons are nauseatingly hypocritical and self-serving, who preaches sermons about himself and how great he is and how persecuted he is at the same time, who behaves like a boor and a bully in the pulpit week after week and its obvious he can't see it, and obvious that no one dares tell him - and who can't even preach a sermon on God's love without getting ticked off at the congregation - these might be symptoms that a pastor has "CEO Disease".

And check out my comments below at the end of PJ's article.

Here's is "Prodigal John"'s article:

------------------------------------

I write advertising for a living. One of the things you do when this is your job is send everything you write to lawyers for a legal review. This is not my favorite part of what I do. As you can imagine from reading this site, sometimes lawyers beat my words like they are a pinata overstuffed with sarcasm and mildly amusing wit.

Once, at a company outside of Boston, I sent our head lawyer a ten page document containing thousands of words for a new branding campaign. A few days later, I got an email. Here is the entire message he sent me:

NO!

I wanted to write something equally rude back. I wanted to say, "Ohhhh is it already 'one word Wednesday?' I want to play! I want to play! OK, how about I respond with 'WHY?'" Or I wanted to say, "Whoa, enough of that legal jargon. Can you please explain things in terms I will understand? Can you please simplify your thoughts?

But I couldn't say anything but "thanks for the feedback" because this guy was untouchable. He was roommates in college with the guy that started the company I worked at and so he got to do what he wanted in any way he saw fit. (By the way, if you wear a bow tie to work, like this guy, you should be jolly and happy. Jerks should not be allowed to wear whimsical bow ties. That makes no sense.)

I was admittedly angry at first, but then I realized that I should feel bad for him. Because of his status, he was not living in the real world. He was suffering from what they call "CEO disease." People wouldn't tell him the truth. People only told him what he wanted to hear. Like the emperor in the fable, "the emperor's clothes," no one was honest with him. He was insulated in this fake world where his actions and words were not challenged at all. So he had grown foolish and disconnected over the years. The scary thing is that this happens to Senior Pastors too.

I wish this wasn't true. I wish this was just me flossing about an idea not a real issue, but I think it's true. Somewhere along the way, as a church grows, members can often move from respect to inappropriate levels of reverence for their minister. They stop challenging the messages. Stop questioning the decisions. And you don't have to look very hard to see examples.

One massive minister was caught in an affair a few months ago. In his initial attempts to defend his innocence, he answered questions about why he often got a hotel room by himself in the city he was from. He said that he used the hotel rooms to write his books in, that's all. What? Are you kidding me? His wife, his staff, his accountability partners, the people in his life that cared about him, never questioned that behavior? If I ever told my wife that I was getting a hotel room in downtown Atlanta for the weekend so I could get some quiet writing done, she would laugh out loud and tell me to go to Starbucks for a few hours. And then she would laugh some more, just muttering to herself and shaking her head, "ha, hotel room in Atlanta. Ha."

Another minister in my neck of the woods was given a Rolls Royce as a gift by his church. I'm not even sure where to start with this one. I admit, I prefer to sit on baby seal skin leather seats and I like the dashboard of my car to be virginal cherry wood from a small cove on the coast of Portugal, but that just how I do things.

How does it happen? How does Senior Pastor Syndrome sneak in? I think it starts in marriage. Growing up, a lot of the marriages I witnessed at church and at friends' houses had some pretty clearly defined roles. The husband was the hero. The wife was the cheerleader. His role was to be super awesome. Her role was to tell him he was super awesome. I can laugh about that now, but for a few years that really damaged my own marriage.

The first time my wife tried to criticize me, out of love, inside I thought, "What? What is she doing? I'm the hero! The cheerleader doesn't criticize me." It took a while for us to tear down these harmful roles and have a real relationship.

If you're a pastor, this is a good time to do a reality check. Are you getting critical, loving feedback? Or are you driving a Rolls Royce right now because you are so super awesome? And husbands, does your wife have the freedom to tell you the truth?

Mine does now, most of the time. We're admittedly a work in progress. Yesterday, after I read her my "dear dads" post I wanted to put on this site, she told me it was no good. And she was right. It wasn't. So I didn't post it. But that was the truth and though I fail at that often, that's where I want to live.

--------------------

While both CEO's and "Senior Pastors" might suffer from "CEO disease", I believe it has to be MORESO a problem with Senior Pastors, especially of the SBC mega churches than it is with corporate CEOs. This is because CEO's actually report to a Chairman, and they are accountable to an independent board of directors or trustees who demand results. CEOs don't select their own boards from their trusted "yes men". They have corporate nepotism policies that prevent them from hiring relatives under their direct supervision. CEO's don't have people showering them with praises calling them "God's man", and his close advisors don't shield him from criticism by telling his detractors he is "God's annointed" and "touch not thine annointed CEO". He can't answer his detractors by saying "I'm accountable to God Almighty, not to YOU!"

And people don't call him first person, "CEO" (as in "Pastor").

CEO's operate in a highly competitive, cut-throat business environment, where their competition is after every fraction of a percent of their market share. They can't avoid dealing with the government under some "church/state" clause - they deal with government regulators watching their every move. They must pay corporate income and property taxes. CEOs have share holders to whom they are accountable. CEO compensation package is not a mystery, its known to every share holder who wants to know, every penny.

CEO's and their companies have to respond to anonymous and non-anonymous complaints. In fact they encourage employees and customers to submit complaints in many forms, as they crave feedback so they can address problems, real or perceived. They must comply with whistle blower laws that prevent them from punishing their internal critics who seek to bring to light corruption in the corporations.

And, get this: Corporate CEO's have to lead an organization into actually delivering a service or product that people like, and that benefits people or other companies; they don't raise their revenue by telling people "God said for you to give 10% here in this book in the Old Testament, and guess what, God wants you to give it to MY company, and uh, God will bless you for it. Amen?"

If one is a mega church pastor, he can certainly say: "Its good to be da king." Just make sure, King Pastor, you aren't walking around naked and no one dares tell you.