The November 28, 2006, issue of Christian Century magazine carries an article by sociologist Mark Chaves titled “Supersized: Analyzing the trend toward larger churches.” Chaves presents research showing that “the number of very large Protestant churches has increased in almost every denomination on which we have data” (Chaves and his team did not investigate Unitarian Universalist churches), and that the rate of increase in the number of very large churches has increased since the 1970’s. Additionally, Chaves says that “the very biggest churches are getting bigger,” and that churchgoers “are increasingly concentrated in the very largest churches.”

None of this should be a surprise to anyone. We all know that the number of megachurches (i.e., churches with greater than 2,000 average attendance each week) continues to grow, and that megachurches continue to get bigger. What may be surprising is Chaves’s analysis of this phenomenon. Forget other explanations you’ve heard about why megachurches succeed, Chaves says:

I suggest another explanation: the increased concentration of people in the very largest churches is cause in part by rising costs that make it more and more difficult to run a church at a customary level of programming and quality.

Churches suffer, I think, from “Baumol’s cost disease.” This is a phenomenon identified in the mid-1960’s by economists William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen. The basic idea is simple: if there is increasing productivity and efficiency in some sectors of the economy, and if wages increase in those sectors, then wages also will increase in other sectors, or else talent will move to the sectors in which wages are increasing.

However, some kinds of activities cannot be made much more efficient…. Activities that have at their core human effort, training, practice, attention and presence cannot be made much more efficient. No technological invention or social innovation makes it possible to reduce the level of input into such activities and still get the same level of output, so enterprises organized around such activities cannot be made more efficient without a reduction in quality.

Churches are subject to Baumol’s cost disease…. The only options [for churches] are to sacrifice quality or increase revenue.

Of course, other observers have come to similar conclusions, but Chaves comes up with good evidence to support his conclusion. Chaves documents that while church revenue has been increasing in American churches since the 1970’s, costs have been outpacing revenue increases, especially in the area of salaries. The result is not surprising:

When cost increases outpace revenue increases, churches cut corners and reduce quality by deferring maintenance, declining to replace youth ministers [or DRE’s and MRE’s in Unitarian Universalism] when they leave, replacing retiring full-time ministers with half-time pastors, and so on.

Some of this can be seen here at First Unitarian in New Bedford. Active membership has remained flat since about 1960, and since that time pledge income has not kept up with rising costs. Although the effects of inadequate revenue have been cushioned by income from a substantial endowment, the last major building renovation was pre-1970’s (when the big growth in megachurches began), and we currently face a substantial backlog of deferred maintenance. The Director of Religious Education position has been cut substantially, and at only 13 hours a week it has gotten to the point where we have had difficulty attracting viable candidates (the position is currently unfilled). Also, quality in programming has clearly declined over the past forty years.

On the other hand, I believe there has been some small increase in efficiency, especially in the church office. Computers have greatly increased the efficiency of producing documents, and increased the efficiency of bookkeeping, and I expect that within the next five years nearly all churches will move towards providing almost all documents via email and the Web, increasing office efficiency further. I also believe that applying modern non-profit management techniques can increase efficiency in church offices (especially since most church offices are run fairly inefficiently to begin with).

But the salaries for minister(s) and for religious educator(s) combined typically constitute more than half of a church’s budget — and there isn’t much you can do to increase the efficiency of ministers and religious educators. In fact, ministers are probably less productive now than they were forty years ago. In 1971, Unitarian Universalist minister Dana MacLean Greeley wrote that he worked an average of eighty hours a week, and that was probably fairly typical. Today, minister work weeks are more likely to average forty-five to sixty hours a week, which keeps pace with competitive jobs such as social work, psychotherapy, university professor, etc. (Part of the change here is that Greeley could work eighty hours a week because he could count on the full-time support from his wife, whereas gender roles and expectations have changed radically since 1971.)

If productivity doesn’t suffer, then quality probably does. Greeley wrote that he spent an average of twenty hours a week preparing for and writing sermons. I spend ten to twelve hours a week on my sermons, because that’s all the time I can set aside. I know the quality of my sermons suffers because I don’t spend enough time on them, but I have no more time to spend. The lack of time spent in sermon preparation may well explain the steep decline in quality of Unitarian Universalist sermons in recent years.

One factor that could lead to increased efficiency for ministers is the increased laicization of ministry. For example, many congregations are developing lay ministry or pastoral care teams, in which volunteers lay people are trained to provide pastoral care to people in the congregation; the minister increases his/her efficiency by extending his/her reach by means of training and supporting volunteers to carry out traditional ministerial tasks. Small group ministries can also be designed to allow volunteers to deliver high-quality ministry under the guidance of a trained minister. Interestingly, megachurches often use such techniques to support their ongoing growth — not only do they take advantage of the economy of scale, they also are increasing the efficiency of their ministers.

A couple of things become extremely clear from all this. Well over half of all Unitarian Universalist congregations are small (less than 100 year-round average attendance at worship). These small congregations face a stark choice. (1) If a congregation wishes to stay small, they must cut services, probably by cutting back on the minister’s salary. They will probably also have to cut the quality and quantity of services, and rely increasingly on volunteers. They will face ongoing problems with deferred maintenance, and they will also face increasing difficulty attracting new members who can still get a high level of services in larger churches. (2) If a congregation wishes to maintain the current (or higher) level of quality of services and programming, they will have to do several things: increase worship attendance to above 300 weekly year-round average; further increase revenue by increasing giving by current individual members (often by as much as 100% per average pledge unit); give up unrealistic expectations about what ministers can do (in a 300 member church, the minister will have far less contact with individuals than in a 50 member church); give up the intimacy of the small church; and proceed with rapid laicization of ministry.

If that’s all there was to this, it would be a stark choice indeed: cut services drastically and hold on to intimacy; or cut intimacy and hold on to high-quality services. But then you consider how many people there are out there who really are Unitarian Universalists already, just waiting to be welcomed in by us. I’m happy to give up intimacy in order to provide a welcoming home for those people; if for no other reason than basic hospitality which grows out of the core of a radical Universalism which says that all should be welcomed.

“Prepare Thee for Serious Marketing,” an article about church marketing techniques in Sunday’s New York Times, appears on the first page of the Business section — an unusual place for a religion article in the Times. But that’s because this article looks at how churches are borrowing the latest marketing techniques from the business world.

Reporter Fara Warner starts out with Willow Creek Church, the granddaddy of evangelical mega-churches in South Barrington, Illinois. Warner visits an example of Willow Creek’s newest venture in marketing and member retention:– a program called “The Table” that sounds remarkably like the old Unitarian Universalist “Extended Family” programs from the 1970’s, which you can still find in some Unitarian Universalist churches (my dad belongs to an “Extended Family” group in his Unitarian Universalist church in Concord, Mass.). Warner tells about Randy Frazee, one of the many pastors at Willow Creek, as he hosts a “Table” in his home:

As dusk settles on this neighborhood of 1920’s bungalows and old farmhouses northwest of Chicago, Randy Frazee strums a banjo on his front porch, waiting for his dinner guests to arrive. No cars line his curb because everyone who is coming lives within walking distance.

Once the 12 guests — ranging in age from about 7 to 70 — and the Frazee family have gathered around three tables set end-to-end, they join hands, and Mr. Frazee says a prayer. A meal of barbecued brisket, cheese potatoes, and green beans follows.

Throughout the evening, conversation occasionally touches on favorite scriptures and “walking with the Lord.” The guests tell about their best and worst moments of the week. As dinner wraps up, Mr. Frazee asks one of the couples to talk about “how Christ walked in their life.”…

…a total of more than 6,000 people recently attended several hundred weekend “Tables” in the neighborhoods surrounding Willow Creek’s campus. These “Tables” supplement small groups that the church has already organized around people with similar interests — like mothers, singles, or teenagers. But the idea of “The Table” was based on [geographic] proximity, Mr. Frazee said, so that people began to meet neighbors who weren’t just like themselves….

I don’t think you’ll find much talk of “walking with the Lord” at a Unitarian Universalist “Extended Family” group — after all, we do use a different religious lanugage. But the point of “Extended Families” and “Tables” seems much the same: to get church people to meet in an informal setting. As usual, the Willow Creek folks are very aware of the marketing strategy that lies behind this program:

Corporate marketers have been using similar events for years to try to create closer connections with their brand. Nike, for example, has worked with gyms on new workout routines to make its brand visible beyond sporting goods stores.

For churches, events like the ones created by Willow Creek are meant to offer members a similar closeness, albeit for a more profound purpose: religious worship and discussion.

“In the early church, people didn’t get on their camels to go to Bethany to worship,” said Mr. Frazee, who created similar programs as pastor of a church in Fort Worth before he joined Willow Creek in 2005. “We have adults who seem to have suffered a spiritual stroke. They go to church, but they have forgotten that wonderful sense of hanging out, that basic expression of fellowship in their neighborhoods.”

In other words, church people seem to want some unstructured hang-out time from their churches.

Warner goes on to report that the mega-churches are watching generational trends closely. The Baby Boomers like big, corporate-style worship services with thousands in attendance, but the next generation (described as people born in the 1960’s and 1970’s) is looking for churches to be more “authentic.” Warner interviews Robert B. Whitesel of Indiana Wesleyan University:

“The younger generation sees the mega-churches as too production-oriented, too precise,” [Whitesel said]. “They want church to be more authentic. There is a feeling among this generation that there has been a waning emphasis on the spiritual.”

Mr. Whitesel siad this shift was changing the focus of what a religious leader does at a church. “The boomer church has the paster at the top who is supposed to figure out what the church is,” he said. But in the newer churches he studies, he added, “the pastor has more of a marketing function in understanding what the congregations wants and finding ways to provide that.”

“The pastor has more of a marketing function” — that sounds pretty mercenary and cold-blooded. But I’ve been thinking that it might be possible to take advantage of this generational trend in a way that doesn’t seem quite so mercenary. Maybe we can frame this marketing concept in terms of how leadership should happen in a church. Instead of having pastors as CEO’s, it looks like we need to develop an understanding of the pastor as “servant-leader” who helps facilitate grass roots expressions of spiritual needs. Corporations are finding out that they have less and less top-down control over their brands, as consumers make the brand their own. So too with churches, I think: with the newer generations, we’re going to have to move beyond a centralized top-down hierarchical control of a church or of a denomination, towards a new understanding of non-hierarchical shared leadership.

Translate that back into marketing terms, and you might find that instead of advertising in conventional media, churches might be better off using new participatory media like — well, like blogs — media where you can tell me what you think.

More from Jay Conrad Levinson’s Guerilla Marketing Excellence, as adapted for church marketing. Part 1 of the series has a general introduction to Guerilla Marketing [Link].

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Strategic alliances, Guerilla Marketing’s golden rule #28:

To assure your marketing success in the future, become more oriented to cooperation than competition.

As the owner of a business that engages in marketing, you’re out there amidst the competition all by yourself. It costs more to operate that way. And you options, as a loner, are more limited. So is the service you are able to provide. This is not good in an era when customers require more than ever in the way of coddling and follow-through.

Recently, we’ve been seeing groups of Unitarian Universalist congregations band together to buy billboard space, underwriting on public radio, regional Web sites, and so on. So far, many of these cooperative ventures have been pretty successful. Slowly, we’re getting over the idea that your Unitarian Universalist congregation is a cut-throat competitor with all nearby Unitarian Universalist congregations (to say nothing of liberal Christian and Jewish congregations, the local Buddhist group, etc.).

But I don’t think we’re going far enough. Beyond Jay Conrad Levinson’s broad assertion that you have to cooperate to survive, there’s an added factor for us: Liberal religion has its back to the wall right now. If we keep trying to cut the throats of other liberal religious congregations and groups, we’re all going to die.

For small businesses, Jay Conrad Levinson offers a list of potential partners in strategic alliances. I’ve modified his list to apply to liberal congregations. Consider making strategic alliances between your congregation and these groups:

• Denominational and district authorities
• Other Unitarian Universalist congregations in your area
• Unitarian Universalist congregations outside your area
• Other liberal religious groups
• Other churches, synagogues, and places of worship on your street
• Huge national organizations
• Private individuals in your community
• Your staff
• Businesses and banks in your community

How can you make alliances with these persons and groups on the above list? Use this guiding principle:

In the book Guerilla Financing, co-authored by Bruce Blechman and me,… we define partnerism as “combining all the necessary resources to make a business successful.” A key point we stress is that you must consider everyone you deal with on a business basis as your partner — as a potential ally for a strategic alliance.

I’ve started thinking this way, and here’s what I have done so far:

(1) My denomination, the Unitarian Universalist Association, wants to build strategic alliances with congregations to promote growth, and they do this by offering lots of resources, so I take them up on their offers. Maybe what they have to offer isn’t exactly what I’d like to use, but I can’t afford to turn down the high-quality ad materials they offer at cost. Like the big banner we bought from them for $100 that says “Civil Marriage is a Civil Right” — if we got our own banner made, it would cost twice that.

(2) We’re beginning to cooperate with the Unitarian Universalist congregation in the next town as we plan advertising. In the past, the two congregations saw each other as competitors. Building an alliance helps us see how we can pool resources — for example, we’re working together on a campus outreach program at UMass Dartmouth, and already that strategic alliance has raised the visibility for both of us in the community.

(3) Recently, I heard from Donnis, who is a member of a Unitarian Universalist fellowship in Puerto Rico. She pointed out that their Spanish-language Web site gets thousands of hits from all over North America. She asks rhetorically: Why doesn’t every Unitarian Universalist Web site put a prominent link on their Web site to Unitarian Universalist Spanish-language materials [link]? So what if you can’t offer much to Spanish-speaking people in your area — you’ll still build additional credibility in your community, which can only benefit you.

(4) I’ve just begun talking with other liberal religious groups in our immediate neighborhood. We’ve just begun to explore how we can pool our resources to promote liberal religion in our area. With a big evangelical mega-church going in just a few miles away, we’re going to have to build alliances just in order to get our liberal religious message out in the community.

OK, now it’s your turn. How are you building strategic alliances? I’d especially like to hear from people who have organized successful regional ad campaigns — but feel free to share anything you want.

I’ll still be on the train when this appears, and I’ve posted this in advance pending a full wrap-up of General Assembly….

More from Jay Conrad Levinson’s Guerilla Marketing Excellence, as adapted for church marketing. Part 1 of the series has a general introduction to Guerilla Marketing. [Link]

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The danger of originality, Guerilla Marketing’s golden rule #23:

Don’t invest money in originality when the investment should be in generating profits.

Originality. It’s what collectors look for in fine art. It’s what entrepreneurs avoid in guerilla marketing.

This golden rule of marketing works somewhat differently in church settings. In liberal churches, we are not looking to increase profits. But as religious entrepreneurs, we are trying to grow our churches by increasing the number of active members and friends. (Remember that an “active member” is best defined as someone who shows up for worship services; if you want to know how many active members you have, calculate the average worship attendance for the past year.)

In spite of the differences, this golden rule of guerilla marketing for religious entrepreneurs still holds true. Avoid originality in your marketing materials! Or as Jay Conrad Levinson says:

A guerilla repeats what works. Whenever you run a successful ad, run it again. Whenever you engage in a profitable promotion, engage in it again….

Oveer the years, by talking to newcomers to churches, I have learned which guerilla marketing materials actually work. Although there will always be differences from church to church, probably these same things will work for you:

• The church newsletter
• The “Wayside Pulpit” posters in the signboard by the street
• A content-rich Web site, updated weekly
• Word-of-mouth, including “Bring-a-friend” Sundays
• Sunday school brochures
• Attractive, visible church signage that tells who you are (actually, your whole building is a kind of sign

(Notice what’s not on this list: newspaper ads, direct mail, telephone solicitation, billboards, radio ads, TV ads.)

If these are the marketing materials that work best, doesn’t it make sense to pour more energy into them before you try some new kind of marketing? Before you rent space on a billboard, make your church newsletter truly excellent. Before you buy air time on NPR, make sure your Web site has the information newcomers want, and that it’s updated weekly. Before buying in to an expensive newspaper ad campaign, spruce up your church signage (and the exterior of your building while you’re at it). Don’t invest money in originality until you make sure the marketing materials you already have are the best they can be.

Since you’re starting to think like a guerilla marketer yourself, I’m sure you’ve already started asking every newcomer who walks in your door how they heard about you. So:

What marketing materials work for you right now? How will you repeat them again and again and again? How will you resist the temptation to be original?….

Just got off the phone… I was talking with Susanna Whitman, the Growth Services Administrator at the Unitarian Universalist Association. I needed to order a big outdoor banner saying “Marriage Is a Civil Right,” which Susanna’s office handles, but in the process of ordering it we got to talking about church growth. Susanna pointed me in the direction of several great resources:

New Congregation and Growth Resources has links to dozens of resources.

Large Congregations Library is a new page of short articles on growth topics. Susanna pointed out that even though I’m in a small church, many of these articles are relevant to our needs, too.

Religious Hospitality is a new pamphlet written for lay leaders. Loosley based on the book Radical Hospitality, it offers a religious rationale for why we should welcome people into our congregations.

Yesterday, I exchanged pulpits with Rev. Ellen Spero, the minister at the Unitarian Universalist church in Chelmsford, Massachusetts — she preached here in New Bedford while I preached up in the Chelmsford church. I like pulpit exchanges because I get to check out another church, to see what’s happening there.

When I got to Chelmsford, I went down to the kitchen, and while I stood there sipping tea and chatting with a couple of friendly people, I watched a mom with two daughters walk into the room. The two girls were grinning ear-to-ear, and you could just tell that coming to church was a high point of their week. That seemed like a good sign. Later when I stood greeting people as they walked into the sanctuary, you could see and feel that really everyone was pleased to be there; another good sign.

When I stood up to do the opening words, I could see that most of the pews were pretty well filled up, yet there were still people coming in, so I said that perhaps people could move over to open up some aisle seats for the latecomers — and everyone just moved over without even thinking about it. You could just feel the good energy in that room, and you could feel that these were people who know how to care for one another.

The preaching part was just plain fun. Preaching, as any minister will tell you, is something that the congregation and the minister do together. The Chelmsford congregation did more than their share of the work, so I sounded better than I had any right to sound; a good congregation can do something to make even an average preacher like me sound pretty good.

I could feel an indefinable something in that congregation; something very good is happening there. Not that I want to go and be the minister in Chelmsford; I like our little church here in New Bedford. And I’m sure the Chelmsford church must have its own peculiar frustrations and challenges. But the last time I felt that indefinable something that I felt in Chelmsford was in the Watertown, Massachusetts, church a decade ago when they doubled in size in two short years. I’d bet the Chelmsford church is either going to grow in the next few years, or they’re going to have to work very hard to keep from growing.

All of which led to an interesting thought for me: there are churches where it takes more effort and energy to keep growth from happening than it does to let growth happen. Based on the limited sample size of the churches I have happened to visit, I’d say that is true of more than half our churches: i.e., in more than half our churches, I’ll bet it’s easier to grow than to stay the same size.

If you want to know if that’s true in your church, watch the children as they arrive on Sunday morning. If at least some of the children are grinning as they walk in, watch out — your church is ready to grow.