There are Big Protestant Marketing Problems! A local minister, young Pastor Bob, Jr., came to see me at our Marketing Company, Flim, Flam & Fluff. What a challenge he gave us!
He began by explaining: “We have some credibility problems. The Catholic Church has been around for two thousand years. Our denomination was invented by my Dad, our very own Pastor Bob, Sr. The Catholic Church was founded by Jesus.”
I replied, “Meaning no disrespect to your Dad, but that is a big difference.”
“It gets worse. Some smarty-pants told me that Jesus said one time, to one man, in Mt. 16:18-20 “Verily, verily I say unto you thou art Peter and on this rock I build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I give you the keys to The Kingdom of Heaven. Whose sins you bind on earth are bound in Heaven! Those whose sins you loose on earth are loosed in Heaven.” Dad and I looked it up! Jesus actually did say that! Why did He have to say that? Why would Jesus make things hard for us?”
“Hmmm.”, I said. “You have a real marketing problem! Those Catholics have actual history and God is on their side.”
“It gets worse! Some other smart guy told us that The Catholic Church has never changed a single Doctrine in The Faith Handed Down From The Apostles! He criticized us just because we don’t believe in having any rules that might keep a person from being happy.”
“Is there something wrong with wanting people to be happy?”, I wrote in my notebook.
“And, they say those Catholics provide the actual Body and Blood of Jesus in Communion with something they call ‘Transubstantiation’! We can’t do that! And they say in John 20:23 that Jesus gave Catholic priests the authority to forgive sins! How do we get people to ignore all that history and Bible stuff and keep on giving money to us?”
Note to self: “These people should stop quoting from the Bible. It just makes them look bad. They need a ‘short version’, a Bible with nothing in it that might make anyone feel bad about him/her/itself.”
“Wow!”, I said, as young Pastor Bob Jr. finished. “There are Big Protestant Marketing Problems! That’s why we’re here at Flim, Flam & Fluff! Just off the top of my head, here’s what to tell those pesky people smart enough to see any historical shortcomings in yours, or in any, of the 43,000 Protestant groups:”
Young Pastor Bob Jr. looked at me, expectantly:
“Tell ’em ‘Our churches are real old, too. There were hundreds of thousands of ‘home churches’! They preserved the faith without altering a single doctrine!’ Really! They’ll believe that, but you mustn’t snicker when you tell ’em! Look real serious and say: ‘Despite the Roman Empire’s secret police and neighborhood spies, and in spite of invasions by Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Vandals, Huns, Mongols, Saxons, Normans, Alans, Jutes, Lombards, Vikings, and Moslems that wiped out entire nations, regions, and cities, hundreds of thousands of ‘home churches’ that had no written records of Old or New Testament documents magically kept every type of Christianity alive until Martin Luther. Tell ’em ‘We know that is true because they left no buildings and not one single written record!. They remained utterly invisible! Even today, we can find no sign that a single ‘home church’ ever existed! What can that be but the power of God at work!'”
Young Pastor Bob, Jr. was stunned! He looked at me like he was a pole-axed steer! His jaw dropped! His eyes opened wide! He stared at me as if he’d seen a great light! “Wow! I never understood the Power of Marketing before! Maybe, my Dad and I could come back and find out some other things to tell ’em! You are absolutely brilliant!”
That, naturally, was the perfect time to discuss our billing rates that, as he was speaking, had been tripled.
We decided to meet the following week.
