A gun? Are you kidding me?

semiautoJust when I think I’ve seen it all I read this article at Church Marketing Sucks. Apparently someone thought it would be a good ideas to give away a semiautomatic assault rifle as a church giveaway!

The church’s youth pastor, Bob Ross, said it’s a way of trying to encourage young people to attend the event. The church expected hundreds of teenagers from as far away as Canada.

I was seriously expecting, hoping, that the link would take me to the onion…but this is a real honest promotion.

Church marketing MUST be about more than getting butts in the seat, it’s about more than a gimmick or attracting attention…it MUST be about life change. Go ahead and give your iPods away, serve free coffee and donuts, but be about more than the number of people that walk through your doors. Be about the number of lives that are shaped and molded by God.

And for the love of all of sanity…use your head. When you as a church do something like this, you cast a cloud over many churches.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 1:57 pm and is filed under Sunday morning, ugh... . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • Mark I am so glad you are back in LA, it is SO clear that is where you belong.

    I don't know, I don't think you can call this a successful marketing effort.

    Sure we're talking about it...but I also talk about Charter and how crappy their service is. Just because people are talking about it doesn't automatically make it effective.

    People talk about the church all the time:

    "they don't get it"
    "out of touch"
    "power trip"

    None those are results of successful marketing. While I get the 'there's no such thing as bad press' that's only true if they find a way to take advantage of the chatter.
  • Hey! I am back so now you might be able to say ALL the crazy people are in LA. After a few years of living with a bunch of corn-fed traditionalists I must admit it is GREAT to be back around the freaks!

    Let’s be real people! There is no longer a separation between church or secular marketing. Although I don’t know if it was intentional this “shock” marketing strategy is working, and all of us are playing our part.

    Forget the moral issues. Heck, does that even matter anymore? I see less integrity and ethics in the church than…ok I’ll stop!

    As far as marketing – offering a gun is pure genius (because it worked)
  • And you thought you had all the crazy people in LA Sean!

    I'm not a gun guy...I owned a .22 once and just used that to harass squirrels in the backyard. But I'd understand giving away a hunting gun to a group of hunters...but like you said an assault rifle?

    Who in the world is their target market Al Qaeda?
  • Well it is Oklahoma... how ever an AR-15? They're giving away an AR-15? That gun was designed with one purpose and on purpose only, to end human life. Its not a hunting rifle, its an assault rifle. I could understand if it was a local event and they were giving away a hunting rifle, or a hunting shotgun even, but not an assault rifle.

    This is just irresponsible. I'm a gun owner myself, I like to hunt too. I am just not sure there is any logical justification for giving away an AR-15. I gun designed to kill a man...

    Its stories like this that make people think that all the mid-west is is a bunch of red-neck crazy christian gun totting lunatics... an AR-15... They're the ones that need Jesus...
  • Right on David...I can't even imagine the meeting where they were all brainstorming great ideas and finally coming up with the idea of giving away an assault rifle.

    And though they canceled it this year, they said they'll give it away next year. Not sure what changes in a year that makes it a good idea in 09.
  • Aye Carumba! I'm a marketing guy, and I truly believe churches need to do better marketing...but this is just off the rails. It is one thing to attract attention through your marketing it is another to lose your mind in the process.

    I agree with you, ultimately, it must be about life change. Connect people to God and build on that relationship. Unless I am missing something, there is nothing a rifle can do to further that ultimate mission.
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