| EASTLAKE CHURCH SEX BAIT |
| The Community Church next to where I live likes to use Magazine Marketing tricks to get people's attention. Isn't God supposed to be the focus of Church? The sex bait--how to improve your love life-- is becoming more common. |
frontside of flyer, note that this is not a magazine |
First off, as a business I have no problems using sex bait. I always hear people complain that the American Media is over saturated with sex which is nonsense. The reason sex sells is because in Amerca we are still on the prudish side and have made sexual imagery into a forbidden thrill--not just religious groups, certain political groups don't want you getting a charge from seeing a naked man or woman either. If you want to alleviate sex bait you normalize sexual imagery as common. In other words, we need to see more naked people, not less. And all flavors of nudity, not just the skinny models. Thankfully the internet is doing just that.
So if a church is like a business and has to fill the aisles then I'm all for using sex and promising "a casual atmosphere" with "loud music" similar to what a club or bar might do. But then why do Christians come down hard on actual businesses using the same tactics? Is it because Christians have a stranglehold on what they think is appropriate sexual behavior? Yeah, that's probably it. And it's pretty damn, arrogant.
As you can see the image to the left looks like a magazine cover, even has a barcode which serves no purpose. This is a flat, full color flyer. The entire concept is to get your attention much the same way when you're standing in line at the supermarket waiting for the guy who can't figure out the debit card machine. All across the rack in front of you are magazines baiting you to pick them up and read them--most of the tactics appeal to sex.
One of the reasons I left the mainstream American Church and tried to enter the Eastern Orthodox church (a long story to tell some other time) is because of this embracing of marketing in order to sell God. I never understood why God needed to be marketed? If God needs to be marketed to the lowest common denominator will you truly attract followers who want to sacrifice themselves in mind, body and spirit for the Almighty? No, you're going to get people who want to socialize, find their spouse (or second or third spouse) and sing and dance. And these are the kinds of people I kept meeting in the mainstream church. They didn't seem any different to the people I knew in the secular world except they tried to not swear and they felt guilty about looking at naked people. Church is now about fun and what it means to you. It is no different than American culture itself. You could almost say The New Church is an R-rated move that has been edited to a PG rating; no nude scenes but plenty of sex talk. |
backside of flyer |
And after ditching the church and rediscovering what it means to be human as an atheist, I'm all for embracing the ideals of American culture which often involves taking group thought and breaking it down so that it means something on an individual level. But how does this apply to religion? Religion is meant to kill individual ambition and create a desire to serve others. How come the flyer didn't say in big letters: 4 WEEKS OF LEARNING HOW TO BE SUBSERVIENT ...?
Because that sort of message appeals to very few and now the Church is embracing the masses. They are competing in the mass market amongst each other--the free market of religion if you will. That is why you will see a church on almost every other block. Each church offers something different in order to appeal to the consumer. The newer churches are going for the youth market and sex sells.
There's nothing wrong with Christianity discussing sex or how the sex fits into the Christian life, but Church should be about God and if God is real he doesn't need to be marketed.
What I see from this ad is that selling sex to get people to come to church is more effective than talking about God in order to get people to come to church.
As this style of marketing continues God, or at least the more traditionally defined God, will take a backseat to an individual's love life. As an atheist, the idea of God definitely takes a backseat to my love life. As a Christian, I think I would have to be questioning these marketing tactics as really nothing different than what the mass media does and in so doing attracting the same people that fixate more on themselves than serving God.
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