I highly recommend David Mays' notes. Mail him & request the periodic notes. Saves time in reading & motivates him to read & summarize.
- Mert Hershberger
mertaka@everybody.org
David Mays [mailto:davidmays@acmc.org]
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BRANDED NATION
The Marketing of Megachurch, College Inc., and Museumworld
James B. Twitchell
Simon & Schuster, 2004, 327 pp., ISBN 0-7432-4346-3
Twitchell is a cynic. But reading this from a Christian perspective may lead us to serious consideration of our practices.
Evian water: 9 oz. For $1.49 equals $21.19 per gallon (11)
[MERT: Which backwards spells: Naive' ! Amazing how many water bottles litter the roads & riverways!!]
We have “become emotionally involved with not just animate nature but inanimate commerce.” (35)
[MERT: The Message paraphrase hits the nail on the head when paraphrasing the prophets, calling forms of idolatry: religious kitsch. (sp?)]
“Heaven is richly imagined in poor cultures.” “When we have a surfeit of stuff, we tend to spiritualize parts of it in the her and now, forgetting the luxury Beyond. That’s why few people in the West today even have a sense of what’s in Heaven.” (36)
[MERT: Did Jesus say anything similar about the sort of blessing that comes to the poor?]
2. One Market Under God – The Churching of Brands
[It is very interesting to read what someone writes about ‘church’ from a purely marketing perspective. dlm]
“At the macro level, all religions offer the same transaction. They exchange the meaning of life for some investment by the believer.” “The product of most religions is usually safe passage to the next world....” (48) [How do you respond to these statements? dlm]
==> Is the narrative that the religion offers actually historically & objectively based & universally relevant? WHAT IS THE PROOF? GIMME A GUARANTEE THAT I CAN TRUST & NOT JUST CHANT!
Christianity (not merely denominations) is historally based (The tomb is empty, the Old & New Testament documents have a better historiographic base than ANY other narrative, including Chinese dynastic histories, which far outpace any other "narrative"), objectively testable & satisfying (Jesus said, "If you want to know if what I say is true, put it into practice." When false religions [including branded forms of godliness] are practiced, the result is increasing frustration!), & universally relevant (all nations)
“What is remarkable is that these systems rarely compete head-to-head with one another for market share. With the exceptions of Christianity and Islam, they seldom convert fresh believers.” (49)
(Buddhism actually does compete, in a more subtle form of introducing idolatry & pagan statuary & ideas of futility & lies via the "exiled ruler" of Tibet who makes many famous displays of humility. Hinduism has at time competed in the forms of various devotee sects.)
If religion were a company, it would be number five on the Fortune 500 with $50 billion in revenues. (56)
MERT: James 1:26-27 gives the best definition of true "religion." (Religion: that which is binding as an obLIGatory lifestyle.)
The Catholic church is a $7 billion brand in distress. (58)
MERT: According to some parishes, if it were not for INDULGENCES (yep), more local "franchises" would go under.
“For many churches this never-ending competition added the perpetual pressure to stay solvent. That, in turn, always argued for attracting the widest audience, paying attention to the take-away value, and focusing always on the end user while all the time pretending to a higher calling. Marketing became a necessity.” [Note the word “pretending.” The author apparently
does not believe there is a higher calling. dlm]
MERT==> As I have read through the Gospels, I have come to believe that it is exactly this "pressure to stay solvent" financially which is the mythical & deceptive "teaching of the Pharisees." Jesus knew that if satan could entice the church with the candy of cold cash, then the church would become impotent. Simple churches & compassionate lifestyles are what Christ starts, we despise the little things & want a better image, so we make one for ourselves with "new teachings," "new books," "new churches."
“American churches have invented lots of fun—serious, competitive fun.” (57)
[MERT: Why do kids who go to youth group drop out? The fun does stop at some point & the deepest needs are not met with one more ski trip, mission trip, or camping-trip. The Gospel does lead to joy though, even in the midst of suffering!]
“Branding fetishizes objects in exactly the same manner that religion does: it ‘charms ’ objects, giving them an aura of added value.” (65) [Wow. Dlm]
“The powerful allure of religion and branding is the same: we will be rescued.” (68) [Has the marketing of stuff taken the place of God for our rescue in American culture? Dlm]
[MERT: The saddest thing I ever read was how a fellow decided he needed to "re-image" his ministry to be more successful in the USA. Most ministries (my own included) could typically gain more by re-pentance.]
"Forget the hellfire and brimstone; pass the remote control.” (72)
[MERT: Some like it HOT, some like it COLD, most like their own pot, NEW or OLD.]
“The megachurch is the dumbing down of American religion, epiphany lite, minister as personality, service as TV with musical interludes, cherry-picking of smug baby boomers, obsession on the ‘front door’ never minding the flood leaving the ‘back door,’ fair-weather churches feeding easy-to-digest junk food to the already overweight.” (89) [Easy to dismiss the overdrawn cynicism but are there any smoldering old rags under all this smoke? dlm]
EDUCATION
Getting into college is a cinch. (110)
[MERT: here at Ann Arbor @ the U of M, after a lawsuit about reverse discrimination, the net result was MORE students admitted & less clarity & "justice" than ever in the application process.]
“Schools like mine have four basic revenue streams: student tuition, research funding, public fiscal support, and private giving. The least important is tuition, the most prestigious is external research dollars, the most fickle is state support, and the most remunerative is what passes through the development office.” (120)
[MERT: Whenever monasteries became focussed on "development" in the middle ages, it was a sure sign of their imminent decline, eclipse, or destruction.]
“An English major at [the University of Florida] today can graduate without taking ... a single course in literature.” (169)
[MERT: Is it any surprise then that there have been English teachers who couldn't read?]
4. Museumworld – The Art of Branding Art
5. When All Business is Show Business, What’s Next?
“And since you can’t generate brand loyalty on the basis of faith, you essentially do it on the basis of add-ons, on the basis of value added to affiliation, on the basis of providing convenient community.” (280)
“As opposed to the megachurch, Higher Ed, Inc., and Museumworld, the diplomatic world is acutely aware that it is in the marketing business. No one pretends otherwise. After all, diplomats are politicians, which, as formed Clinton adviser and current TV pundit Paul Begala famously observed, is just showbiz for ugly guys.” (292)
“In the next generation of diplomacy the ability to brand your nation before your competition does it to you is going to become crucial. “Those states that successfully fictionalize themselves to others...will prevail.” (292)
[You can see this in travel brochures. dlm.]
[MERT: New Orleans successfully began to "fictionalize" itself in the early 1980's in a massive . Result? It was a wash-out ... & the poor suffered most. It was a very costly gamble, yet people continue to invest in what is a sure loss.]
“We have come to live in a world of continual and often frantic storytelling.” (298)
[MERT: This is why I think the whole thing with C.S. Lewis' novels cum movies is WAY out of proportion in the Promo department in Churches:
A. They are fiction.
B. They were not intended to tell the Good News.
C. They are kids's stories.
D. They are not nearly as amazing or as powerful as the Bible itself.
E. REPEAT: THEY ARE FICTION!! THE BIBLE IS TRUE!! (AS ALL WHO HAVE SET OUT TO DISPROVE HAVE FOUND.)
F. ARE WE TRYING TO GET PEOPLE TO BECOME LEOPHILES OR "LAMBS" WHO ARE WILLING TO FOLLOW THE =GOOD=SHEPHERD= TO A "SLAUGHTER."]
[I discount a good bit of what Twitchell says about churches because he seems to have no understanding of spiritual reality. He only sees at a surface level. But I am deeply concerned about a society driven by a yearning for deep meaning within the material world. dlm]
[MERT: I disagree with the fundamental discounting of _any_ truth & pure cynicism. It does seem ironic that a "professor of marketing" is critiquing marketting so severely & selling a book about it. BUT his cynicism should lead us to ask 1 simple question: is the church in love with Jesus or is it not? Are we salty? Or salt mixed with sugar? Looks the same, but not nearly as useful! I think the fellow hit it right on the head when he pointed out the lack of "fire & brimstone." Where there is no fear of God that comes from prophetic utterance / vision => chaos happens. Blessing comes as we dwell on&in, the Word, even Jesus. Again & again, I wonder if Tim LaHaye did not do the Bible its greatest disservice when he created an apocalyptic series that was a bestselling work of fiction & then sued his co-author. "Kyrie, eleison!" "Tuhan Allah adalah terbesar-besar dan Allah adallah kasih, tetapi jika gereja ngak mau dikasihi dariNya, apa?" [Lord, have mercy!! The Lord God is Most Great, and God is Love. But if the church does not want mercy from Him, then what?"]
[?? How much of what the church does is actually modelled on the babylonian approach to God??
hopeful
