Yesterday I posted a link on my Facebook wall. It is called Churchmarketingsucks.com. It is a site that I found way back and I found that it is a very good site for us, Christian designers, to read about.

No, it’s not a site that declares church marketing sucks, but it is actually a site that drives our motivation about designing things for the church and God.

In a brief, they believe that if you are a good designer, then you should or even have to give out the best design effort possible to create a thing that communicates God to the masses. Let me quote what they wrote:

Our mission is to frustrate, educate and motivate the church to communicate, with uncompromising clarity, the truth of Jesus Christ. Church Marketing Sucks is a part of the Center for Church Communication, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping the church matter.

Frustrate.
Something’s wrong with your church. Something’s wrong with the Church. Church marketing efforts and communication in general suck. We’ve got the greatest story ever told, but we don’t know how to tell it. The church has a problem communicating, and it’s time to change.

Educate.
We love the church, but it needs some help. Typos, cheesy logos, and bad clip art aren’t helping the cause. But snazzy marketing won’t save this ship, either. It’s not about being perfect, but there’s a better way to communicate. It’s authentic, it’s loving, and it knows how to spell.

Motivate.
This isn’t simply about putting butts in pews or selling glossy postcards. It’s about helping the church be the Church, and seeing lives changed as a result. If helping the church communicate better allows one person to finally glimpse the Gospel, then our work has been worthwhile. It may be fuzzy math, but God can worry about that.

Offended?
Good. So are we. For too long the church has been the object of scorn and Christians have been the reason people turn away from Christianity. It’s time to change.

If you’re offended by our use of the word ’sucks,’ we do offer an alternative url, ChurchMarketingStinks.com, and we’d encourage you to check out our rationale for using the word ’sucks.’

Not Offended?
Good. You can help. If you think you know what you’re doing, if you think your church’s marketing doesn’t suck, then come alongside and offer your support.

What’s in it for Us?
A lot. We want to see this name changed to ChurchMarketingNoLongerSucks.com as soon as possible. All of us behind this project are communicators. From writers and designers to businessmen and creative pastors, we all want to help the church communicate better.

The reality is that we all have day jobs, too. Many of us make a living at the very thing we’re asking churches to do: design better, write better, communicate better. Are we asking churches to hire us? Nope. Do we need them to hire us to put food on the table? Nope. Would we turn a church away if they did want to hire us? Probably not.

ChurchMarketingSucks.com is an idea, not a business. You’ll notice there is limited (and filtered) advertising, no pop-ups, no gimmicks. We’re a part of the non-profit Center for Church Communication, whose mission is to help churches matter. What’s in it for us is what’s in it for the church: not sucking.

Yes, DESIGN better. Our church can afford to do that, but we often being faced with the statement of “GOOD OR BAD IS A RELATIVE THING”. Oh I agree completely, and probably not all of the members of the church have the best design or artistic taste or aesthetically inclined, but try this argument: If we can afford (please note the statement “we can afford”) to print out a design that works best in full color for God, would we still want to print out those cheap photocopied ones? Or those poorly designed flyers with crappy typography. Too bad, in our church, yes, they would print out crappy leaflets or use those crappy flyers. Heck, even our website sucks, our annual budget report sucks, our church office signage sucks, and our church magazine sucks. That dreaded Indonesian horror magazine might’ve look better.

This is not the case of saving money, because by all means, the church can afford that even after saving its money. We’ve been blessed by God with the capacity to do so. This is because nobody realized how important communication, branding, and everything else in regards of expanding and communicating His Kingdom to others. Probably we should consider helping other churches that are less fortunate to be able to do the same.

So, is it hard to give the best for God? No, it is not when you give it out to the people who really have the expertise and wanted to help. Too bad, some of them already disappointed to even want to help again. It’s all about being ignorant and being simply tasteless.

So go ahead, visit the site and open your minds. If you’re a designer, designing for God is not something hard to do. All we need to do is just not to suck. Because if you do, then it’s probably because you don’t have the talent (perhaps God wanted you to use your talent somewhere else, this is not something bad).

I’m not shamelessly promoting myself as a good designer, I’ve decided that my days in graphic design service at the church is nearing the end, and someone should really replace my spot. I believe there are lots of good designers in our church. Why not ask them how to do things? They know best because it’s their expertise. Remember, this is for God, so I’m taking this seriously. It should be the best. After all, in the end, a visual disease is still a disease. Doctors would like to cure AIDS so bad, and mechanics fix cars that are broken. And we designers, just like doctors, we cure visual diseases. That’s why God gave us the talent.