Church enlists devilish humor as billboards offer unusual promos for CedarCreek
CedarCreek Church officials said there is serious business behind the billboards, which have drawn Web site visitors.
By DAVID YONKE
BLADE RELIGION EDITOR
It's Holy Week and the devil is steamed.
As the world's 2 billion Christians commemorate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Satan is venting his anger on billboards attacking one of the largest churches in the Toledo area.
"CedarCreek Church Sucks" is his message displayed on a blood-red background at Talmadge and Monroe streets. Two more billboards are scheduled to go up tomorrow, Good Friday, saying,
"I Was Robbed at CedarCreek" and
"Boycott CedarCreek."
All three billboards will be "signed" by Satan and include a Web site address,
www.SatanHatesCedarCreek.com.
"We want to shake the tree," said the Rev. Lee Powell, lead pastor at CedarCreek, which started the ads last week.
"We actually got the idea from a church in Oklahoma called LifeChurch," he said yesterday. "When we saw what they were doing, we immediately thought, 'That is so cool,' and we laughed. Then we said, 'There is very serious business behind this humor.'"
Mr. Powell said he received permission from LifeChurch to use the marketing strategy for CedarCreek, an independent "seeker-sensitive" church founded in October, 1975.
Church officials expect 10,000 people to attend nine Easter services at its Perrysburg Township and Whitehouse locations.
The devil advertising campaign has been heating things up around CedarCreek's offices.
The church's Web site normally gets 1,800 hits a day, but SatanHatesCedarCreek.com has been drawing 3,600 visitors daily since the billboards were posted, Mr. Powell said.
He said he notified CedarCreek's 7,000 regular attendees that Satan's billboards were on the way, but not everyone was pleased with the ad campaign.
Of particular concern was the use of the word "sucks."
"One guy e-mailed me and said, 'I use that word myself, but it does not seem right to use it in association with the church,'•" Mr. Powell said.
"Some people are more upset with using the word 'sucks' than they are that their friends are dying and going to hell. And that upsets me," the pastor added.
He said the term "sucks" has become a "neutral word that does not have the connotation it used to have."
Each billboard costs between $600 and $1,800 a month, and CedarCreek has signed a six-month contract with the billboard company, Mr. Powell said. But the Satan messages are likely to come down before the contract expires because "they will get old and lose their humor."
Mr. Powell worked in marketing at the national headquarters of Sears and Montgomery Ward retail giants before going into the ministry, and believes that advertising has played a key role in CedarCreek's explosive growth.
"For us, marketing is critical," he said. "Church growth happens through personal invitations, but those personal invitations are bolstered by having the church name out there. There's a synergistic power when you invite people and they say, 'I've heard of that church.'
"About half of the people who came to our church said advertising had something to do with it," he said.
The Rev. Tom Schaeffer, pastor of 10:35, a 3-year-old church that meets in the Maumee Theater at 10:35 a.m. on Sundays, also considers marketing to be essential.
"Marketing is really, really critical," he said. "We have people who come because of the advertising, but it's more about preparing the soil for our people when they do invite someone. Because if they've heard of 10:35 and they find out that their friend goes to 10:35, there's a connection that's made. There's a kind of familiarity."
10:35, a satellite of St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Maumee, also has run ad campaigns that turned people's heads.
One radio ad featured heavy-metal music with a booming announcer voice saying, "Shock your mama!"
The commercials started with a phone ringing and a motherly voice answering. It's her son, who sounds like he's in his 20s, calling to tell her he can't make it to the family's Sunday brunch. When the mother asks why, the son says it's because he's going to church.
"You hear a thump on the other end of the phone and through the rest of the ad you hear the guy going, 'Mom? Mom? Mom?'" Mr. Schaeffer said. "It was so effective."
10:35 is now running a variation on that ad, but the new version departs from the humorous script to say, "The truth is we're not that interested in going to church, we're more interested in being the church."
Mr. Schaeffer said surveys show that the major criticism of today's churches are that they are judgmental and uncaring.
10:35's new ads seek to counter that impression by saying it's "a church that lifts people up instead of knocking them down," and that it is working on such projects as preventing AIDS in Africa.
"It's more substantive. It's not all slapstick," Mr. Schaeffer said.
CedarCreek takes the same approach with SatanHatesCedarCreek.com, stating on the Web site: "While these billboards are funny to us, the reality is that this is very serious business. Satan DOES hate YOU, and what GOD is doing in this church. Our hope is that people outside of the church will see these signs while driving along and CONNECT with its ironic message."
Brad Abare, a Los Angeles marketing consultant and director of communications for the 5 million-member Foursquare Church International, said churches need to think of marketing as "communication" that connects people with the Gospel message.
"We've got the greatest story ever told and not enough people are listening. That's the premise of church marketing," Mr. Abare said. "It's not about butts in pews; it's Christ in hearts."
He said all churches market themselves, even if they never buy an ad.
"Their marketing may be passive. 'Oh, we're just the church on the corner and we've been here 100 years. If people come, they come; if they don't, they don't.' That's certainly marketing - it's bad marketing."
Mr. Powell agreed that marketing is meant to not only capture people's attention, but also to connect them to Jesus' message.
People who are offended by seeing Satan's name and the word "sucks" on billboards are not looking at the big picture, he said.
"I think this is a case in point of Christians overreacting," Mr. Powell said.
"This is a case where other people in society say, 'Come on, get a life. You need to relax. There are more important issues out there,'•" he said.
Contact David Yonke at:
dyonke@theblade.com
or 419-724-6154.
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