It Pays to Advertise : Pastor Turns to Madison Avenue to Help Fill the Pews

An advertising blitz by a downtown Methodist church has attracted dozens of new churchgoers, along with a spattering of criticism from people who think Madison Avenue should stay out of the sanctuary.

The Rev. Dr. Kenneth W. Chalker said the campaign has been so successful that First United Methodist Church is building a second parking lot to accommodate worshipers.

The campaign has included newspaper advertisements, bus billboards, radio and television commercials and direct mail, all featuring Chalker.

“People identify with a person, I’m told, in advertising,” he said. “They don’t identify with a building or a denomination.”

The witty, offbeat ads have included such headlines as “Look Into Our Master’s Program,” “Summertime and Religion Is Easy,” and for college newspapers, “Rush at East 30th And Euclid. We Don’t Have a Hell Week.”

“It’s been an exciting thing for everyone,” said Chalker, 38, a native of Brookfield who was named senior pastor a year ago to try to boost attendance, as he had at churches in Alliance and Lexington, Ohio.

The church budgeted $140,000 to hire Robert Carter & Associates to coordinate the public relations and advertising campaign that began last fall. The church has an endowment from a land sale decades ago and Chalker decided to use some of it to help the church grow “rather than simply protect (the church) and die wealthy.”

“I wanted people who have been turned off by the church in the past to be able to sit up and take notice,” he said. “I didn’t want any ad . . . to be negative, judgmental, condemning or as if, ‘Here’s the answer and you’d better come and get it quick.’

“When I walked out there the first Sunday, it was really hard,” Chalker recalled about his first Sunday service. “The Sunday before, I left a church where there were people standing. To walk in here--and not counting my wife and two children, there were 57 people in a room that seats well over 1,000--that was pretty tough.

“But we have made a significant change in just a year. For instance, on the same weekend--the July 4th weekend--we had doubled twice what I experienced a year ago.”

Attendance in the first six months this year was nearly double the attendance for the same period last year, from 2,315 to 4,042. The church has registered 67 new members since the beginning of the year.

And the makeup of the congregation is more diversified, Chalker said.

Most of the worshipers used to be senior citizens from the neighborhood. “In terms of families or younger couples or young singles, there just weren’t very many,” he said.

Chalker said he believes it is important to keep downtown churches alive, in part, to serve the community. First Church has a daily meals program for the elderly and a day-care center.

“I really believe strongly that the church is the only place where folks of different economic, social and racial background can come together in an atmosphere that is totally--and really should be--positive and hopeful,” Chalker said.

He said the advertisements “get people here once. We’ve got to have something that is valuable so they keep coming.”

Stories about the advertising campaign resulted in a few letters attacking the method as irreverent, he said, but most people have been supportive.

Brenda Brooks of Cleveland is one of those who was attracted to the church by one of the early newspaper ads. She is now a member.

“It was such an open invitation. I felt compelled to go,” Brooks said, adding that she finds Chalker’s sermons relevant.