What Place Sunday pm? Sunday Shopping and Choice!

The church building was, for many years, the only place that people could go in a Sunday. I once spent a few days visiting a friend who lived in a picturesque Welsh village. Not only was it 'dry' (not a drop of alcoholic beverage to be found) but it was also totally closed and lifeless on a Sunday.

Sunday was for Church. there was nothing else and unless one took the bus (or drove) to those centres of sin and excess (AKA the city), it was that, television, radio or God!

When I was in the pentecostal movement, one of the jobs I had (when at conference) was to go and buy the Sunday newspapers and deliver them (without detection) to the various members of the executive so that the faithful wouldn't know they read the newspapers on a Sunday! I recall that the Northern Irish contingent were especially cagey about the keeping up appearances.

But of course today has changed. Sunday shopping means that whilst the faithful few gather to worship at the pointy-spired buildings, the general populace rush off to the cathedrals of commerce that are the Metro Centre, Bluewater and the many smaller imitators of the retail therapy venues. Those self same people who can't make a ten-thirty Sunday service are often to be found at nine-thirty driving into the city centres and out-of-town retail cathedrals.

Why can the make it for one but not the other? The answer is simple - because they want to.

Ask the question, "Why don't people come to an evening service?" The answer is - because they don't want to.

Church was once about duty and commitment and now it is about choice.

Talk to the general public and you'll quickly find that faith, God and all the stuff we do as Church are on their agendas, hearts and minds. They won't package the stuff in the words and action we (Christians) might use, but it's the same product.

So how do we communicate this reality and how do we get them (the world) into our church buildings?

Some people will hate this, but it's all about marketing!

I once appalled a couple of little old ladies by telling them that the reason for our decline was that we'd forgotten what our 'core' business was. It wasn't jumble sales, coffee mornings, fund-raisers and women's groups - it was about God and man coming together and engaging in a relationship.

If we were selling chocolate we'd find out what flavours the people liked and we'd set about making that flavour. Then we'd pilot that flavour and tinker with the product until the response was positive. Then knowing we had something people wanted, we'd market the stuff, making sure it was where the people were and trying hard to outdo the opposition so that we were the number one brand (in Church circles we call this 'sheep stealing' ;) ).

"If they don't know, they won't buy' - These were the words written big and bold on the wall of the marketing department of a multi-national foodstuffs manufacturer I visited years ago. Another wall said "selling coals to Newcastle or ice-cream to the Eskimos is easy - try selling something to your Mother first!"

There's a degree of truth in that - why do we expect the world to come to the very things we don't seem able to give away to out own friends and family?

We are trying to do that aren't we???