WASHINGTON — The United Church of Christ, the bastion of liberal Protestantism that traces its roots to the Mayflower Pilgrims, is betting a new $1.3 million ad campaign can turn around decades of declining membership.
On March 1, the Cleveland-based church launched television ads in six markets, hoping the church’s progressive theology and social positions can attract people who have been turned off by other churches.
“Jesus didn’t turn people away,” says one ad that features beefy bouncers guarding a velvet rope outside church doors. “Neither do we.”
A New York advertising agency, Gotham Inc., found the church’s name recognition is “negligible at best,” and most people confused it with the far more conservative Church of Christ.
The UCC, which claims 1.3 million members -- down from 2.1 million in 1965 — is following the Methodists, Lutherans and other mainline churches in hoping that television will help fill empty pews. The Presbyterian Church (USA) is test-marketing a national “awareness” campaign in southeastern Colorado, including Colorado Springs.
“It may well be that the church we created in 1957 is just right for today’s people, but they don’t know we exist,” Ron Buford, coordinator of the church’s “Still Speaking” outreach campaign, told the Christian Science Monitor. “The medium for today is TV. You don’t exist if you’re not on TV.”
The ad campaign coincides with a major fund-raising drive launched by the church’s top official, the Rev. John Thomas, who said he refuses to “succumb to relentless erosion.” Thomas said last year the church faces a $33 million deficit by its 50th anniversary in 2007, and wants to raise parishioner giving from $140 million to $1 billion.
The six initial test markets for the ads include Oklahoma City; Cleveland; Springfield, MA; Raleigh-Durham, NC; Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL; and Harrisburg-Lancaster, PA.
If the ads go well — and the church finds people to fund them — Buford hopes to take the campaign national “later this year.” |
