I really enjoyed reading Church Marketing 101 by Richard Reising. As a believer with a marketing background, he lays out the basics of what marketing is. What challenged me is his thesis is that everything you do and don’t do is part of your marketing strategy. Even if you are anti-marketing because you feel there’s no place for that in the church, everything we do is communicating something about our church.

The issue is, will we decide what we want to communicate? I highly recommend the book to Pastors who want to reach their communities (which should be all of us). I am going to buy a couple of copies of this book and give it to some of my staff. There’s a lot of practical questions at the end of each chapter that I want to think through for our church.

I was amazed to learn how seriously businesses take their image. His section on experience was powerful and how Starbucks is constantly evaluating the experience of their customers. I was really challenged by their commitment to my experience in buying coffee. I started thinking about what an experience at my church should be like. How much of that should be common for every person? Should every person be warmly greeted? Did everyone experience understandable signage? Is our website geared to someone who is visiting our church for the first time? That and a million other questions ran through my head as I read this book. As church leaders, we have the most important message in the world to share, we just have to say it in a way that connects. Buy this book!