Church Marketing: Building and Sustaining Membership

Abstract

This national study surveyed Protestant church leaders to determine the perceived effectiveness of their marketing efforts for building and sustaining membership. Findings show 24 very effective tools that are being used to retain members, attract attendees, and persuade them to become members. Tools for both retaining and attracting are the church Web site, along with children and youth/teen ministries. One attribute for both retaining and persuading is the age of the congregation. Tools for retaining only are social media, Internet search engines, service length, and college/young adult ministries; and those for attracting only are personal referral, number of services offered, projection screen, monthly newsletter, sermon content, physical environment, outreach worldwide, and Internet Webcast ministries. Ways to persuade attendees to become members include leadership roles for women, multisite churches, women ministries, church atmosphere, relationship building, membership of family, and pastor's publications. The financial strength of the church empowers leaders to achieve three goals—retain, attract, and persuade.

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