Church Renewal Activist Doubts New TV Ads Will Help UMC's Dwindling Numbers
by Jim Brown
August 29, 2005
(AgapePress) - A conservative United Methodist activist is skeptical about the impact of the latest installments in a series of television advertisements the United Methodist Church (UMC) is running, which tout its slogan "Open hearts, Open minds, Open Doors." A new two million-dollar extension of the church's ad campaign will begin airing today (August 29) and will run through September 18. According to the United Methodist Communications office, the new series of ads called "The Journey" features various "people following different paths until, ultimately, they join together with an invitation to visit a United Methodist Church." But Mark Tooley, who heads the United Methodist Action Committee at the Institute on Religion and Democracy, feels many UMC "elites" are overly preoccupied with diversity, and this latest church public relations campaign may be a rather disingenuous example of that preoccupation.
"In some sense you could argue the ads have been a little bit deceptive in that they tend to emphasize racial diversity," Tooley points out, "but the United Methodist Church, unfortunately, in the U.S. is over 90 percent white. We are not very racially diverse, and we have not been successful in reaching out, especially to the growing Hispanic population."
According to the UMC conservative, it is simply false advertising to portray the denomination as being "racially diverse," as he feels the "Journey" promotions do. Even so, he questions the effectiveness of the church's media campaign and has doubts as to whether this latest string of inoffensive but "languid" ads will make have the effect UMC leaders are hoping to create.
Tooley says the UMC has spent millions of dollars on TV ads since 2001, but its "Open hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors" advertising series seems to have done little to curb the denomination's falling membership rates. "By and large, TV ad campaigns have not been shown to be overly effective tools for evangelism for denominations," he explains, "and growing denominations, by and large, have not used TV ads to any great extent."
Conversely, Tooley points out, "Those denominations that have attempted to use TV ads have largely been declining mainline churches." According to the UMC's own statistics, while the denomination lost only 34,000 members in 1999 and 36,500 in 2000, the church has been seeing a more rapid decline in recent years, with the departure of some 69,000 members in 2003 and 71,000 members in 2004.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
