And in a very real way, marketing is to blame.

Let me explain…about a year and a half ago, my family joined a (very) small Reformed Episcopal (a.k.a. “Anglican”) church here in Amarillo. I grew up in the Episcopal church, with the 1928 prayer book, the 1940 hymnal, and all the ritual and liturgy that the Church of England bequeathed to the Colonies back in the day. We found our church in kind of an odd way. When we first relocated to Amarillo, I wanted to find an Episcopal church. I found two – one that was pursuing the post-modern, cherry-picked theological, anything goes style worship favored by the main body of the Episcopal church in the United States. The other struck me as kind of old and stodgy. Neither had any appeal to me. So we went elsewhere. We landed at a “mega-church” – one of the many across the country that features a “praise team” (read: “Christian rock group”) and a sermon as their service. Not exactly what I was used to from a liturgical point of view, but at least we were in the pews…um…seats, every Sunday. Then my wife was approached to create a strategic marketing plan for a small Episcopal church. We checked out the church, and found a traditional church, using the “old” prayer book, the “old” hymnal, with a firm grounding in traditional Anglican theology. No gay bishops, same-sex marriages, or any other “if it feels good it can’t be wrong” kind of nonsense. We’d found our church home.

We realized quickly that the church had no budget for the kind of marketing they really needed. Running in the red every month, it was obvious that we needed more members, or the church wouldn’t survive.

I volunteered to create a fairly sophisticated website, with an online gallery, online calendar, interactive content, a blog – the works. My wife joined the vestry, and did everything she could do to help raise money and find new members. As specialists in guerrilla marketing, we believed that if there was a way that marketing could help, we’d do everything we could to build our member roles.

Sadly, it wasn’t enough.

Last week, we had a parish meeting, where we, very reluctantly, voted to disband. There were a lot of tears. A lot of questions. And a lot of regrets. In the end, though, we had to face facts – our declining revenues and inability to attract enough families meant that the handwriting was on the wall.

Could we have done more? Perhaps, but I don’t know what we could have done that would have worked better than what we did. Still, I can’t help but think that as marketers, we should have been able to “sell” what I believe is a “superior product” – traditonal Anglican worship – and attract more families.

In reality, we were working at a big disadvantage – several of them, in fact. The church had lost their own building, so a huge amount of the monthly nut went to paying rent at another church – which also meant that we had a lot less flexibility when it came to service times and use of the building. The church had been bleeding red ink for four or five years before we joined, so this was nothing new. And of course, when you’re living in an oxygen-free zone financially, you simply don’t have the options to build a marketing plan as you would if you had a little financial wiggle room. Add to that some layoffs that forced members to leave Amarillo and the cratering of the stock market (that hurt our investments) and you have a perfect storm of problems we simply couldn’t overcome.

Do I blame marketing? Yes. No. Maybe. Frankly, I’m still coming to grips with the idea of having to find another church, the potential of seeing friends drift away, and losing what was a great worship experience. I take some comfort that God has a plan for everything, and I’m sure this is not an ending, but a beginning. And I realize that while God always answers prayers, sometimes His answer is “No.” If this is indeed God’s plans, all the great marketing in the world couldn’t affect the outcome – nor should it. So I guess it is pointless to assign blame after all. I just wish things had turned out differently.

In pace requiescat, All Saints. You will be missed.

Back when I lived in Dallas, there was what was dubbed a “MegaChurch” by the media – a church so big it practically had it’s own zip code. Natives referred to it by a different name – “Six Flags Over Jesus.” (“You’ve parked in St. John the Baptist. Please keep your arms and legs inside the tram until it comes to a complete stop. Please exit the tram to the left. We know you have a choice in worship organizations, and we appreciate you worshiping with us today.”)

I’m all for marketing. I appreciate spectacle. But when it comes to substituting spectacle for substance in worship, I’m less enthusiastic. As for me, I vote for a meaningful worship experience, with tradition, mystery,  and a beautiful service with classic language.