On Black Friday, Tracy Larson plans to arrive at area stores by 5 a.m. His end game is not the latest electronic gadget or toy. He wants souls.
Larson and a group of volunteers will try to reach early bird shoppers in southern Pasco County and New Tampa on Friday by proffering bottles of Sunny D and honey buns, gifts that come with a printed message: "You look too hungry to pass up. This is our way of showing God loves you. Victorious Life Church."
Gone are the days when a simple verbal invitation was enough to entice people to church. Now, highly calculated marketing campaigns using elements such as direct mail, television and Internet advertisements, free gifts and guerrilla marketing aim to lure a jaded, desensitized public to the pews.
"You will not reach a community from behind your pulpit," said Larson, the Wesley Chapel church's evangelism and outreach pastor. "The Bible says very specifically that we're to go into the highways and the hedges and compel them to come in. That's the whole concept."
In November alone, Larson expects to spend $10,000 on such outreach gifts, including 22,000 branded candy canes for Christmas. In all, Victorious Life
dedicates 11 percent of its multimillion-dollar budget to marketing efforts, Larson said.
Critics say that many church marketing efforts are too worldly, slightly manipulative and could produce shallow, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately believers.
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