I wholeheartedly disagree. The metrics and methodologies--the tools of marketing--Mr. Ehrlich extols are useful when asking people to make minimal investments (or relatively minimal): phones, hotels, gym memberships, etc. The more investment a good or service requires, the more those tools breakdown.

In fundraising, this sort of marketing is great for asking people to give $25, $100, or even $500. But when asking people to give $1,000, $100,000 or even a million, tools like that just won't do. It isn't about being a number or a demographic anymore. Instead of metrics, we develop relationships.

Mr. Ehrlich's approach will certainly work if we want minimal investment from parishioners, and we have great examples. Look no further than the megachurches. Open the door and see all the people! They're marketed to like crazy, and accommodated to fit a modern world. But they don't stick around. Luckily, there are always more people to be marketed to and brought in, if only temporarily.

Relationship-building might not be new, exciting, or buzz-worthy, but it's certainly what vestries must do if they want to engage and attract people. It's also slow growth, which is decidedly not sexy and looks terrible on paper. But as a vestry member, I'm quite happy with if the people who are there are contributing in significant ways.

So instead of seeing markets, I'd like my parish to see people and nurture them.

The difficulty, Travis, is that you actually have to get them in the door to nurture them, and few are inviting their friends and fewer still are just showing up. I'm no fan of megachurch marketing, but our alternative seems to be the often misquoted "if you build it, they will come." They aren't coming.

I'm not sure I completely agree with Travis, but I also am not sure I really know what Tom Ehrlich is talking about. He lists a lot of things we didn't do right in the 60s, but I don't think he identifies what was really going on, which was more cultural than ecclesiastical. I am old enough that I remember the 50s as a young lay person; I was a seminarian and was ordained in the 60s; I was a parish priest for 20+ years and for 20+ years more was non-parochial (and now retired), but active in my parish of residence and as a supply priest in and out of many different congregations.

"1. Vestries need to stop running churches. Leave that to staff and lay volunteers." Most of our parishes are small. The vestry members ARE the staff and lay volunteers.

"5. ...Everything that went astray in the 1960s and beyond could have been seen and dealt with if we had just had better metrics." I have no idea what this is about. The 1960s were an era of massive national and international cultural shifts. How would better metrics have made a difference? How would they have kept from going astray all the things that went astray?

"2. Vestries need to take risks and make a radical commitment to change.... The “over-my-dead-body” attitude toward change that prevailed in the tumultuous 1970s and 1980s needs to stop." Well, he probably got that right. Although it seems to me that most of the "over-my-dead-body" folks have by now gotten their wish.

"Business as usual will sink us." Yes. But...?

I think the problems of our church today, and of all the churches, are a lot more complicated and pervasive than just fixing the Vestries. (The Vestry of my own parish of residence actually seems to function pretty well. The fact that I don't go to Vestry meetings probably helps!)

"Spesific" may be an overkill:

1) He says vestries need to be strategic thinkers, but give no useful strategies just a vague "look to the future."

2) Take Risks and change, but risk what, change what. The linked website gives the same tired "new stuff" mantra we've had pitched to us since the late 80's.

3) Understand how churches actually work, but no information on how they work other then "not like you thought they did" Link here wants to sell analytical services.

4) "Church Systems" there different from other systems. This link is actually not bad information, but still lacks concrete ideas.

5) Have good metrics. Most don't so this is good advice, still a very accurate description of a problem is not a solution.

6) Listen to the marketplace. See Mr. Trott above.

Here are my suggestions:
a) Most churches have community leaders, get them on the Vestry. Too many vestries are a mix of the willing and the noisy.

b) Do strategy twice a year the rest is tactics and execution. Unless the congregation is big (

c) What ever works well now do more of it and do it better. Too many churches spend so much time and effort on people who are not there that those who are have no energy left. The mythical "New Comer" is far more likely to join a energized and Spirit-filled church then one that caters to new comers with hollow marketing.

d) Find out what gifts God has already blessed your church with and make sure everyone who might like to be blessed with those gifts knows you exist. The real Episcopal Church is the best kept secret in the U.S.

e) If there is something that is causing discord in the community deal with it, now. You may think that conflict can be kept behind the scenes, but I promise you it will ruin the taste of your coffee. Visitors can smell it from the back pew.

f) having accomplished a-e make sure you are doing all the decent welcoming things every church has been hearing about regarding recruiting new member since the late 80's. (child care, greeters, visitor follow-up, paths to inclusion, alternate service times and styles, etc...)