I’m quoted this morning at Jacksonville.com. It’s an interesting story about whether to use denominational names when naming your church and what happens when two churches in the same area have a similar name…Seems churches are running into the same issues as other marketed products — consumer confusion.

Happy New Year!

Click on the link to check out The Interview with God. Once there, click “view presentation.” It is a short piece that some of you might be interested in. I don’t have a lot to a say about it other than it’s an inspiration for the season.

Enjoy!

Okay, maybe it’s all my years in marketing that’s gotten me this cynical, but does anyone else think the brouhaha over Rick Warren is a little too conveniently timed with the release of his newest book in years!!?!?!? I mean you can’t buy this kind of publicity.

Also, for any of you who are on the mailing list for Saddleback you know that the emails have been coming fast and furiously. For those not on the list, Rick Warren had a monthly email called the Toolbox which stopped coming many months ago. Suddenly in conjunction with the release of The Purpose of Christmas, the emails have begun again. Not only is he selling the book, but also he’s promoting small group conferences which cost between $200 and $359 to attend. (As many of you know, small groups are the backbone of a successful megachurch.)

I’m not saying that Rick Warren doesn’t have a right to do these things or sell these products and if people want to buy them, that’s fine. I just find it suspicious that this is all so coincidentally timed with him giving the invocation at the inauguration.

I’ve promoted the web site Religion Dispatches before, but would like to bring your attention to them again because they so brilliantly asked me to do an interview which you can get to via the link.

While I’m in the middle of the end of semester madness, I had to stop to comment on this whole Rick Warren issue.

It reminds me of the famous line that Jay Leno asked Hugh Grant after he got caught with a hooker, “What were you thinking?” which, of course, is said with the totally incredulous inflection that only Leno can do. Okay, repeat after me, “Obama, what were you thinking?!?!?!?”

Inviting Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration was a lose-lose idea from the start and that’s being reflected in all the punditry. The Left can’t stand Rick Warren, well, because of his obvious conservatism (and the fact that he’s compared gay marriage to things like incest and pedophilia); the Right isn’t really please with him either because he does things like let Barack Obama speak at Saddleback even though Obama supports abortion.

I realize that Rick Warren has been dubbed “America’s Pastor,” but let us all remember that we are dealing with a marketing message here and not reality.

The recession, unemployment and God know whatever calamities that yet might come have led non-believers to use any means possible to de-stress. According to an article in today’s New York Times, one way that is finding popularity in New York is to attend a weekend spiritual retreat, whether you are a believer or not.

This creates an interesting dilemma for both ashram and religious shopper. Ashrams tend to be sparse affairs indeed, which is of course the point. Those who attend may not realize that they will spend hour upon hour in meditation, and for the uninitiated this might actually be more stressful. Anyone who has ever tried mediation knows the concept of the “monkey mind,” when you close your eyes, take a deep breath and expect nirvana and instead get a running litany of what you need to do today or what food you need to buy or did you remember to get the kids to school on time….Also a number of these people, particularly women, have probably read Eat, Pray, Love, and they may likely be expecting a transcendental experience similar to what Elizabeth Gilbert describes in her book. That is unlikely to happen for these weekend de-stressers as they are newbies to the practice.

One the other hand, should these spiritual retreat centers take advantage of a new audience for their “product?” Maybe yes. Maybe no. If a particular center can accommodate an influx of new people, and it is likely they have at least some new people all the time, maybe this is an opportunity. A concern might be, however, that a significant increase of new people might change the ashram — something that might happen given a prominent article in the Times. However, meditation has been marketed as a way to de-stress for more than 40 years. Transcendental Mediation (TM) was the leader in using a multi-target audience strategy — spiritual bliss for believers, stress reduction for the overworked executive. Perhaps the centers can segment their classes/meditations in the same way and thus maintain their spiritual core.

Embarrassingly, I was watching Inside Edition this morning (I was at the gym skipping through channels so I hope I can retain a little dignity here) when I came across a story on Reverend Leroy Jenkins.

As many of you may know, Reverend Jenkins is a “faith healer” and reportedly a con artist who has been arrested and convicted a number of times. Yet again and again, people believe in this man’s ability to heal. It works no differently from psychics — the people who attend these sessions (the one shown on air was held at Brooklyn College — I hope we got lots of money for that!!) are people who want to believe. If you view the performance through this lens, it is of course what you will see.

The reporter, Matt Meagher, did a good job of trying to present a balanced story. He brought truly ill people with him and Jenkins refused to “read” them. He did, however, try to read Meagher who would not play long. After this occurred, Jenkins’s response was a litany of expletives which made me think he got elocution lessons from the governor of Illinois.

I highly recommend this piece.

Well, it’s only appropriate that the devil would be the salesperson for one of the most evil of technologies — television.

According to Broadcasting & Cable, The Prayer Channel is rebranding itself as NET (New Evangelisim Television) and they have selected the devil as their anti-spokesperson.

This is actually a fairly clever campaign — at least the Web site is funny which is the only part I’ve seen thus far. If you go to Stop Good TV, you get a chance to interact with the devil, certainly not an everyday occurrence. In addition to the Web site, there will be Facebook and MySpace pages as well as bus advertising. (This is a New York only campaign because the channel is from the Catholic Archdiocese of Brooklyn and serves the New York area.)

Two things are particularly interesting as it relates to this campaign. First, Catholics are using the term “evangelism” in the name of the product. Now maybe this is me, but I usually think of that language in terms of Protestant denominations. (Please feel free to correct me here.) While Catholics of course want to convert nonbelievers, “evangelical” is not a term I think of in relationship with this denomination. Second, the choice of media screams that they are looking to appeal to young people. (It may also being saying that they don’t have a lot of money to spend, but that’s true of all advertisers right now.)

We’ll have to see once the network relaunches next week whether the content marries up with the advertising. Then we’ll really know if the devil is in the details.

On a lighter note, this star-studded video with music by Marc Shaiman (notably of Hairspray fame) gives a new perspective on Prop 8. Enjoy!

The following video called, What if Starbucks marketed like the church?, was brought to my attention via Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish.

The video covers many of the topics that we discuss here, but in an amusing way (though I would have appreciated it being a little shorter).

The videographer is Richard Reisling, author of Church Marketing 101 and blogger at beyondrelevance.com. He also has a web site richardreisling.com.

Unlike me, Richard is an honest-to-God church consultant. Much of what he criticizes about church marketing (at least what I can gather from the video) seems to be in line with what Rick Warren has been warning churches about for decades. Notable examples include the first-time attender (the woman) who can’t find the bathroom or the parking spot saved for “coffee drinker higher uppers.” Warren has always advocated leaving the close up spaces for newbies and, taking a page from McDonald’s, making sure that the bathrooms are clean. (This, of course, assumes that you’ve made them readily accessible or you wouldn’t care what they look like.)

The video’s amusing and fairly informative for the uninitiated. I’m curious if there’s anything beyond the “Purpose-Driven Church” that Reisling advocates. I’ve asked him to check out this blog. I hope he does.