Churches Go Commercial To Spread Their Message

Some evangelical Christians are also dismissive of self-promotion. They contend that mainline churches are losing members because they no longer hew to a traditional understanding of the Bible.

"I am extremely doubtful that advertising is going to have any significant impact on their membership rolls," said R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. "Churches are not a product, they're about the Gospel. And the Gospel cannot be helpfully reduced to a 30-second message or a jingle."

That skepticism, however, has not kept evangelicals from running their own TV ads. The 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention, which opposes gay marriage and has urged wives to "submit" to their husbands, is laying plans for an ad blitz starting in late 2005. Baptist leaders said it probably would be much larger than any of the campaigns they have run every five years since 1985.

Although the Southern Baptist Convention has not decided on the content for its ads, "we will stand on what we understand the Scripture to teach," said Martin King, spokesman for the Baptists' North American Mission Board. "We're proud of the fact that we're not going to shy away or try to make it an easy message."

From the 1970s until the late 1990s, religious ads on television consisted mainly of public service announcements produced by the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the Mormons. Because they were aired for free, such announcements tended to be generic messages to love your neighbor and keep tabs on your children, though they also subtly polished the sponsor's image.

Under the tutelage of professional marketers such as the UCC's Buford, churches are turning to paid advertising to deliver more overtly self-interested messages: to give a denomination a distinct brand, to drive up attendance and contributions, and to raise the pride of current members. Attracting new members may appear to be the main goal. Often it is not.

"The main thing ads do is make your own members feel good -- and that ain't a bad thing," said the Rev. Eric C. Shafer, director of communications for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, which began a $7 million campaign in 1999.

Said David Strand, director of public affairs for the more conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod: "It's like Buick ads trying to make sure Buick owners stay loyal to the brand. That sounds kind of crass, but that's how it works."

Several trends have combined to produce the advertising boom. One is the membership decline in mainline denominations, which they are anxious to halt. The UCC has lost 150,000 members in the past decade. The Episcopal Church has lost nearly 200,000. And the Presbyterian Church (USA) has fallen from 4.2 million members in 1983 to 2.4 million.

Another factor is the proliferation of cable channels, which has driven down the minimum cost of a TV commercial. While prime time, nationwide airtime is still expensive, some congregations are able to buy late-night spots on local cable outlets for as little as $5.

Meanwhile, "it's harder and harder to get public service time," said Pat Ryan Garcia, director of distribution for the Catholic Communication Campaign, which still produces several public service announcements each year. "Since broadcast deregulation kicked in in the mid-1980s, the networks don't have to run PSAs, and our communications directors in the dioceses tell us if they want a guaranteed time, they have to buy the spot."

Even the Mormons, admired by other denominations for their family-oriented public service announcements, have been buying airtime since 1987. They do not disclose their advertising budget, but they spent $3.4 million on cable television in 2003, according to TNS Media Intelligence, a firm that tracks ad expenditures.

When Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" is a box-office sensation and the "Left Behind" novels about the Second Coming have been outselling all other fiction, some mainline Protestants believe they cannot afford to ignore popular culture. "When members of your church see other denominations on TV or hear their spots on the radio, they will just naturally ask, 'When are we going to do something like that?' " said Presbyterian Church spokeswoman Ann Gillies. "In this day and age, you have to have something in the media to tell your story."

Perhaps the most important cause of the boom, church officials said, is the success of an ad campaign launched in 2000 by the United Methodist Church. Its slogan -- "Open Hearts. Open Minds. Open Doors." -- portrays Methodists as warm and welcoming. And, according to research commissioned by the church, first-time attendance has risen 14 percent and overall worship attendance is up 6 percent at a nationwide sample of 149 Methodist churches since the ads began appearing.

At the Methodists' quadrennial convention in May, some internal critics called the "Open Minds" slogan hypocritical because of the church's ban on gay clergy. But Methodist leaders said the campaign's results surpassed expectations, and the convention overwhelmingly approved $25 million to keep it going for another four years, on top of the $18 million that was spent from 2000 to 2004.

Other denominations have taken notice. "I've always called advertising fertilizer -- it only can fertilize a larger effort to evangelize," the Lutherans' Shafer said. "Now I think it's Miracle-Gro."