Shoppers and Hoppers

A staff member and friend at a church I formally worked at recently posted a comment on Facebook decrying the fact that the greatest failure of his generation of Christ followers was church hopping. He referenced  a blog by Steven Furtick about "Stop the Hop." 

So I responded to my friends Facebook comment by stating: "Ok. It sounds great…in theory. However Steven's article complains about people who church hop and shop, saying they need to get beyond the consumerist mindset of shopping for churches, yet the church itself is using a consumerist marketing approach in reaching out to them. How can we complain about the one when they are just responding to how the church is marketing to them? Why would we be surprised when such a person having been attracted to one church, since they have been marketed to as a consumer, now gets attracted to another church, which is seeking to market to them in a similar manner. Obviously there have always been church hoppers and shoppers, the question is, has the churches method of outreach increased this mentality among people?”

It got me to thinking that this issue applies not only to church but to businesses as well, so that’s why I decided to address the issue on my blog this week. Now I’ll be the first to admit that it would take someone with more time and money to pencil this out and do adequate studies to determine if I’m right or wrong, and yes, I’m probably being overly simplistic, but to me it all boils down to developing brand loyalty. Whether the brand is your specific church, your company or the product you sell.

Companies and churches are forever trying to keep people/customers loyal to their brand, so that they will stay lifelong consumers or participants. It made me think about what causes people to shift loyalties from one church to another, from one company to another. Indeed it begs the question concerning the depth of the loyalty that people have to the church they currently attend.

I think to address this we need to go back to what churches or companies do when they are marketing their product to their consumers/members, whether that brand is Calvinism, Wesleyan-Armenians’, Allstate Insurance, HP, Dell or Apple.

Churches/companies try to market to people by branding their products. When I first learned of brands, I originally thought of a brand as a permanent mark. Cattleman branded their cattle to show ownership over that individual steer, in order to prevent someone from stealing it. A side effect, of this was that people discovered that certain cattle from certain ranches tasted better. So people started seeking out cattle to purchase that had the brand of that ranch. They became loyal to certain brands.

The same with manufacturing companies who would build a product that people liked. People purchased a certain product because the product had value. It had something tangible that people could understand, and see and utilize. Whether it was consistency, functioning as it was supposed to, or value for the dollar. The product did what it was intended to do. And so people would continue to purchase that product, that brand. Take the Sears brand. They came to be known for the value of their house hold products. They had brands like Kenmore. If you purchased a Kenmore it would last. You could expect to have a Kenmore washing machine and it wasn’t unusual for the product to last 10, 15 years. And then it only required minor repairs to keep it going another 5 or 10 years.

Companies however found that they were tapping out their markets. People purchased a product that worked well and didn’t need to purchase another one for a couple of decades, so companies sought to improve their products by adding new features to them; such as special spin cycles in washers and dryers, power this and power that in new vehicles. However it was determined that these enhancements weren’t working like they should. So they had to begin marketing their products in such a manner as to make people want to purchase the newest and best products. They built in the idea of planned obsolescence, that no one wanted a product that was “old”. You needed this new, shiny, white product that had an apple with a bite out of it. To sell it to us, they used various marketing, some would say propaganda techniques, like “bandwagon”, “glittering generalities”, “snob appeal” and “testimonials” to convince people why they should purchase their products. The end result is, when you came to the end of the lifecycle of that product the customer had to decide whether to purchase the newest model you sold, or to try out company X’s brand.

The same thing happened to sports teams. People used to be loyal to teams for decades, no matter if they lost year after year. Why, because a person could know the players on “their” team. The players would stay on the same team for a couple of decades. You could learn the stats for that player. A player’s entire career would be spent with one team. But then along came free agency. A player could be an independent contractor. He didn’t belong to any one team, he could move to the team that was willing to pay for his talent. Oh to a certain extent, people still followed and rooted for their “team”, just because they were in their geographic area, but it wasn’t the same. But now with players coming and going so often, Teams would seek to purchase that one star player and hang onto him. They would pay him so much and offer him so much, he had no need to move to another team. And so people would follow individual players. So the teams brand was not only their logo, but even the superstar that was on the team.  If the superstar moved to another team, some people’s allegiances would move to another team.

So too the church in the past several decades has adapted marketing outreach models to reach out to potential members. It used to be that you followed the faith of your fathers. If you were born Roman Catholic, or Lutheran, or Mormon that’s where you remained. But churches like companies and sports teams became complacent and took their membership for granted. They forgot the purpose of their product. They thought people would always use it. But as demographic shifts occurred in our country, people took on the mindset of thinking like independent agents as well.  A free market attitude prevailed. People started dropping out of church, or looking at different churches. So the church entered the marketing business of trying to attract people to their church by appealing to various facets of their demographic…we are family friendly…we appeal to youth…we are deep…we only use the “King James Bible”, we have this or that program…we are a multigenerational church…etc., etc.

We have arrived now to the point that we have an ongoing battle of the brands between churches. And we seem surprised when people church hop with a consumer mentality. Why should we be surprised, when we in large part created the mentality? Why should we complain when the people we attract move on to another church that has a cooler brand appeal than the one we developed.

Instead we need to relearn the value of the product we are selling. Whether you are a company or a church, you obviously believe that you have a great product or you wouldn’t be selling it, or giving your life to it. So what are you doing to convince the people that that product is worth them sticking with it? You must be a creative communicator, because you got people to purchase your product at least once. You got them to enter your church doors to check you out. So what are you going to do, to get them to decide to stay? What value do you provide that will convince people that they should stay with you? What do you have that the other guy doesn’t, or what can you provide that the other guy doesn’t? When you figure that out, then you have to communicate that. Oh it doesn’t mean that a customer or consumer won’t try another product now and then. But if you are consistent, if you stay competitively priced, if you continue to provide value, they will return. However if an organization is so busy working at bringing new members in that it doesn’t spend the time needed to keep the people who are now part of their organization then they can expect people to continue hopping away. 

I realize that some organizations total focus is on making that one sale and they could care less if you made another purchase. They believe that the market is all about getting that new person to buy their product, they don' t need repeat customers. I’m also aware that some churches are totally focused on getting someone to "accept Christ" and they don’t apply the resources necessary to get people discipled and plugged in. Either way, if that’s the business model you have chosen, then don’t complain when people get tired after a while and move on to see what another organization can offer them. Just pass on the names of those previous customers/members to organizations whose business model it is to develop and keep someone’s business.