Good article, and timely as my senior pastor has been recently approached by a company selling "exclusive licenses" of their ads and cable time to promote our church (the ads are pre-made and our church name/website/phone number will be added at the end of the spot). Everything looks slick and on the up-and-up, but it would be a new approach for us - I'd hate to get fleeced.

Are there ways to determine the legitimacy of the company (FaithHighway)? Googling doesn't turn up much +/- on it. Are there questions we should ask to make sure the deal works for us (the devil being in the details, and all).

Actually, page 6 of the Google search turned up the ChurchMarketingSucks "don't suck" page (I really should explore the site more), so I guess they have the seal of approval.

Still, any tips on avoiding contract pitfalls would be appreciated.

Rhinoguy: I'm so encouraged to hear you're even considering something like this, not to mention the apparent pursual of it! I am familiar with the company you mentioned. The products and services they offer have been around for sometime. They actually bought everything from a previous organization who was was the original creator of most of the content. Bottom line: these commercials/ads have been serving churches well for years. My only real concern for you going down this road is how does this play into everything else you are doing to promote your church? If this is your one big "push," I would scale it back a bit and spend less money on more targeted options. However, if you already have other stuff going for you, by all means, move forward. It never hurts to test the water a bit with these higher priced campaigns before diving in all the way.

Yes! Yes!

And if anyone doubts the impact of advertising. We just moved into our first building and had a comprehensive advertising plan including some newspaper ads, direct mail and brochures dropped on doorsteps. We have a printer that treats us well and estimated the cost of this at $12K.

Between the one week before our grand opening and the grand opening day itself, we had about 200 new people come through the door and 70 first time faith commitments. Yes 70. That was out of 750 people at that grand opening Sunday. We were praying for big things, but hadn't imagined anything that big.

Advertising works. If you want to reach people living in the 21st century, you can't act like a church from the old days.

Ooops. In my excitement about our grand opening results, I got two numbers mixed up. So since this is recorded for posterity, let me correct myself.

70 is the total number of faith commitments for all of 2004 at Lakeshore. The number as a result of our advertising bringing people to church is 40. Still more than we had prayed for.

But let me reinforce my point. That's 40 lives that are now won for the glory of Christ because we were willing to spend our money to reach those people on their pre-Christ terms.

In answer to Faith Highway, yes we used them...We did comercials with them...for us it was a total and complete utter flop!!!! Not one person came in our doors that we could find due to the comercials at $2,300.00 a month. Yeah that right! I am kicking myself right now! Direct mail is our ticket...yes there are varialbes of knowing who you are marketing to, and what's on the card, and needing to do multiple mailers. But all that said, it's the key element.

This is what we did to pay for it, since we didn't have the $12,000.00 in the budget. We spread it out over three months and have the people pay for the cards. I told them, "For $38.00 you can personally invite 100 people to church and for $380.00 you can invite 1000 people to church." They ate it up! People took ownership - instead of some "corporate financed outreach." The people really got behind this. Especially if they believe in the church they are going to. Meaning some people attend a church that they would never consider inviting anyone to - they haven't drank the coolaid :-)