Does God Need A Rebrand?
I was doing some research on branding and the church and came across this thought provoking article from one of the world's largest branding companies, Interbrand. The question that was posed is 'Does God Need A Rebrand?"
The debate has two points of view:
1) God is completely irrelevant in today's world.
2) God is not the problem. It's misplaced expectations.
One of the comments cut deep for me.
The problem lies with the 'marketing staff' not God. The church often misrepresents the brand, failing to communicate God's (the brand's) essence that in and of itself is quite relevant & impacting.
Ouch. This comment reminded me that everything we do and say as Christians is church/God marketing.
It also made me wonder, what is God's brand essence anyway? Is it everlasting love, grace? Can we even simplify reduce his qualities/characteristics to an irreducible minimum?
What qualities/characteristics do you think God has?
What qualities/characteristics do our unchurched friends think God has?
Have we (the church) redefined the essence of who He is?
(As the original post said) Argue, bicker, squabble or just give me a piece of your mind. Get commenting.
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Great post (and disturbing at the same time). Someone once said that every conversation is an opportunity to advance the mission of the organization. I think that’s true of talking about God. He can’t be reduced to an essence or a minimum because He is everything. I think the problem is when we try to talk about Him in ways that make US look good (pride).
Isn’t branding God a little like defining him. We can have a go at it, but we fall short in capturing all his elements. Perhaps God’s brand is simply as he says “I am, I am”. Communicating that truth to non-believers takes on various forms, you are never going to market a complete and unbaised version of God, so speak to the questions people are asking, by revealing the truth of scripture.
Good question btw!
I don’t think we should be branding God as much as we need to be branding each smaller community (or church). In these communities, each one is unique representation of many but not all the characteristics of God. As communities, we need to start telling the stories of life change more effectively and how our smaller communities can serve people trying to connect relationally with God and why that is relevant to daily life.
Great, thought proving topic though isn’t it?