Church attendance has been trending down and many once connected to the church are more isolated than ever, even with doors open in the post-pandemic environment.
To reach those in need of faith and community, one organization is spreading the love of Jesus in this digital age using modern-day marketing to revolutionize church outreach.
The numbers tell the story – even before COVID closed doors, membership in America’s houses of worship was headed below 50 percent for the first time in the 80 years Gallup had tracked that trend.
From just before the pandemic through last year, overall church attendance dropped 3 percent over those three years. In looking at the ‘why’, the Pew Research Center found the problems inflamed by COVID: with 1-in-5 Americans reporting they attend church in person less often than before the pandemic.
However, the ministry online platform Gloo has been working behind the scenes online, seeking to connect people with a local church as numbers wane.
“A new trend that we’re seeing as people have moved or they disconnected from their local church during the pandemic, and they’re ready to reconnect back into their faith community,” said Devon Kline, director of Gloo’s Explorer Connections Program.
If you’ve ever wondered why you randomly get online ads for mental health support, marriage help, or dating sites, it’s because your search activity isn’t a secret. In fact, it can be a goldmine for companies like Gloo that are paid to connect you with people who can help.
“There are about 1.8 million individuals that search for relationship help (online),” Kline said. “We make it possible for individuals who are curious and seeking to be able to connect into a local church and a local conversation.”
Relationship help is the top trend Gloo sees in research, and it uses that data to perfect its marketing strategy. Kline sees the company as an online connection engine.
“And just like any advertiser can purchase sponsored ads or do SEO optimization so they show up in search results; that’s one of the strategies that our outreach partners are using,” said Kline. “So it’s really not taking big data, it’s really just being part of the results that get returned back when somebody is searching for help online.”
Kline specializes in connecting you, the ‘explorer’ with local churches and companies that Gloo calls ‘responders.’ And church responders pay from $1,500 to almost $4,000 each year to connect with those ‘explorers’ and fill some empty church seats with new souls.
“We have 23,000 organizations who are using our tools. And so, a subset of that are 6,300 churches who have registered and said, ‘I would love to connect with people in my community,'” said Kline.
Gloo started in 2010 and recently found its stride, connecting 150,000 people with churches nationwide in just two years.
“Those 150,000+ individuals are getting help,” said Kline. “And right now, we’re matching somebody every two-and-a-half minutes. And so that means every two-and-a-half-minutes a church is getting introduced to somebody in their community that may not have thought about walking through their church doors.”
You’ve likely heard of Gloo’s largest partner, He Gets Us, which made its debut at the Super Bowl airing two commercials – part of a $100 million ad campaign aimed at making Jesus more relatable.
“So we’re talking about Jesus, Yes – but Jesus doesn’t need re-branding,” said Jordan Carson, communications director with He Gets Us. “We really have two goals. One is to reintroduce people to Jesus and his confounding love. And the second is really to call upon Christians and have them self-reflect on the way that they’re treating others.”
Other major partners include Churches Care and K-Love Radio. While Gloo’s primary motive is converting people to Christianity – the marketing tension between selling and converting raises questions about using marketing strategies to promote Jesus for profit.
“Yes, sometimes it can represent those types of dollars, but most of the time churches are not joining Gloo and participating with that motivation,” Kline said.
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However, congregations are reaping benefits. Executive Director Greg Reade with Christ Fellowship Church in Florida says they’ve made connections with more than 500 people in the last 18 months. He says this digital outreach makes it easier to share the gospel.
“It just gave us a different view of what evangelism looked like,” said Pastor Reade. “And I think how Gloo has helped us is like, ‘how do we reach those people who are not going to look for a church?'”
“They’re not going to go online and look for him in a sermon. They’re just on social media and they’re searching for something, they don’t know what,” he said.
Participating churches can expect about 12 new connections per month. As these digital campaigns succeed, you can expect to see more outreach that expands beyond the web to public venues, including professional sporting events and music festivals.
Kline says pastors and churches often become disconnected from their own community. Now, a number of churches are thanking Gloo for helping them get back to building stronger relationships with people who walk through their doors.
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