What They Don't Do:
"We don't work well with churches that think they know it all," says Reising. He believes in partnering with local churches to come up with the right plan. He wants the responsibility of a project's success, but that only comes with the freedom to make the project work. Churches interested in a random T-shirt or brochure design may not be the best fit. Reising would rather see those projects in the context of an overall marketing strategy.

Biggest Obstacle to Church Marketing:
"Tommy in 12th grade who did a logo for the youth camp and knows Mac skills," LaCarter says with a laugh. "That's our competition. Churches have rarely seen the value in doing things professionally." Rather than spending the big bucks on a professional marketing company, churches are tempted to stick with free volunteers.

"But you know, Tommy doesn't understand the church's brand," says LaCarter. "And Tommy doesn't understand why certain fonts are used to convey certain emotions and to create certain feelings. And Tommy doesn't understand the importance of the tagline being in the same font and the same point size in relation to the logo every time it's used. Those are the things we're up against."

What Is Marketing:
"A lot of churches think marketing is direct mail," says Reising, "[But] marketing is so beyond the scope of advertising and promotions, that's the problem most churches are having. They don't realize the sermon is marketing. They don't realize that their greeters are marketing. They don't realize that whether or not they cut their grass is marketing. Ultimately, marketing is the management of perception—not the manipulation of perception.

"Marketing is not about looking pretty. It's not about putting a flashy image, or creating a white washed sepulcher as the Bible would refer to it. Marketing is about knowing who you're trying to reach and communicating effectively. And that takes place in everything you do. Your logo has marketing implications. Your denomination in your community has marketing implications. Your church name has marketing implications. The way your pastor dresses in the pulpit has marketing implications."

So the bottom line is marketing is way more than direct mail.

How Are Churches Doing:
"People are very quick to say, 'Oh, we're doing a great job,' and they may really think they are," says LaCarter. "[But] you're either doing a good job of engaging those people around your church that God's called you to meet, or you're not. If you're pulling in X number of people a year of unique first time visitors, and no one is joining, well, there's probably a reason for that. If your membership isn't inviting people to church, well there's a reason for that, too."

"The reality is every church does marketing right now whether they know it or not," says Reising. "The reality is just that some churches are doing it really poorly."

Satisfied Customer:
A church called Artistry Marketing to make a T-shirt for their new school. After spending $150,000 on a marketing plan with another company to launch the school, they had only one or two kids interested. They needed 32 to make it work.

Artistry Marketing passed on the T-shirt, explaining that the school needed a marketing plan, not a T-shirt. Long story short: They gave the school a marketing strategy for less than $15,000, including the print budget. In less than six weeks the school had 36 kids signed up.

"We're holistically a branding firm," says Reising. "If a church is not committed to becoming strategic in the way they communicate from the top to the bottom, then they're not ready for us."

The Dark Side of Marketing:
"You're not going to say something as inappropriate as I don't feel comfortable in that church because there are too many people of a certain socio-economic status," says Reising, explaining that people will never tell you what they really think. "There are a lot of things that are like that on a very human level that cause why people do and don't go to a certain church. And it's not right, and it's wrong, and I know it, but scripture itself tell us in 1 Sam. 16:7 that man looks on the outside."

Humanity is broken, and churches comprised of broken people are also therefore broken. Despite the fact that as Christians we know we're broken, we still have to deal with our fixation on the external. Marketing often gets a bad rap for this, but it's a reality of our fallen world.

"If we don't realize that we have to adjust our communication and the way that we communicate to the level of the person we're attempting to communicate to then we should just give up," says Reising.

Marketing According to the Gospel:
"Ultimately, the whole heartbeat of the gospel is God came down to where we were at, and how can we as the body not do anything less for the people who are lost in our community," says Reising. "There are a lot of churches right now where the senior membership needs to get off the golf course and go sit down in the unemployment line. And there are a lot of churches that probably need to be on the golf course right now. … How are you going to be able to minister effectively with them unless you spend time with them, unless you understand them, understand what their needs are, what makes them tick? You certainly can't do it by reading a book about postmodern theory."

"What might be true on a national level doesn't mean it's going on in your neighborhood," says Reising. "The only way you're going to understand how to be more effective at reaching them is getting out in your neighborhood and meeting them and knowing what they need."

Future of Church Marketing:
In a word: Branding.

"It's a natural progression, [but] most churches don't get it," says Reising. He points to the corporate world and asks when was the last time Starbucks or McDonald's changed their cup? Or when was the last time Nike completely changed their look? The fact is a consistent image works.

Reising tells the story of an 8,000-member church that committed to changing their entire look every six months. "God bless them," Reising says, "but their inconsistence doesn't work. The corporate world has proven it. You don't know any company that so flippantly changes who they are all the time."

One of the biggest obstacles to churches embracing branding is that it requires they know and commit to who they are.

"Most Churches don't want to do that," says Reising. "They just want to follow the model of some other church. But fundamentally, church models don't work." Principles, on the other hand, do work. A church can't just copy what the successful church down the street is doing. They have to figure out what works for who they are. And that's branding.

Why They Do It:
"It'd be the easiest thing in the world for me to go get a job and make sick money doing what I do," says Reising. "But we are so passionate about what we do. We're not doing it because we think we're something, we're doing it because it's a calling. It beats within our chest. Everyone in this office is here because they're absolutely passionate about what we do."