Use of Jargon in Church Marketing

Today we received this mailer from a San Diego area church.* Since we live about 15 miles from their campus I’m going to make two assumptions:

Assumption #1: They sent it to a lot of people!

Assumption #2: They intend to reach a lot of people with this series!

Both of those are world changing things. I know enough about the church to know that they have great intentions. The mailer makes it clear that they are trying to use something in our culture (tough economic times) for a Kingdom purpose. (reaching people with the Gospel.) I’m on board with their intentionality and boldness.

In many ways it is a great mailer. It’s slightly larger than a normal postcard so it stuck out of my mailbox a little. It’s printed on high quality paper. I love the color scheme. Blue, orange, and white catches my attention. The fonts are fine and even the imagery they use is nice. Compared to a lot of church marketing they are way, way above average.

One major problem with this mailer.

Lots and lots of Christian jargon that their intended audience [unchurched people] wouldn’t know the meaning of or much less care about!

– What the Bible says about your financial future.

– The hidden cost of the new global economy.

– The one world order

– The new global economy

– The coming cashless society

– The world financial czar

– The war between God and mammon

– Babylon the fallen city

– God’s final one world order

– The millennium

Conservative evangelicals will recognize this jargon right away… this isn’t really a series your financial future, it’s a series on the book of Revelation. (Words that never appear on the mailer.)

Anyone outside of conservative evangelicalism… this jargon is meaningless. Babylon? Millennium? New world order? War between God and mammon?

My fear is that this mailing may have had a negative impact on the community opinion about them they were trying to reach. This message is ill-timed as the economy is making a massive comeback the economic concerns seem far less interesting, the heavy use of jargon makes them come across as a doomsday cult.

How to fix it? You simply cannot design marketing materials in a vacuum. If you are producing stuff like this in house make sure you field test it on your intended audience before you mail it to a few hundred thousand people. At the very least, send it to a copywriter. This was a preventable mistake.

* Disclaimer: I’ve removed the church’s name on purpose. This post isn’t intented to be a slight at the staff or the church in any way. I like the church. I like the pastor. The people I know who go there say its a great church. This post is only using their marketing as an example. I removed their name because the church name is irrelevant to the discussion.