The Perils of Megachurch Branding
What The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill reveals about pastoral branding and the temptation of fame
BY SETH BOLLINGER
If you’ve ever had the desire to eat a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs because it’s the ‘essential morning breakfast’, you can thank Edward Bernays. Never heard of him? You’re not alone. Dubbed the ‘Founder of Public Relations,’ Edward Bernays laid the groundwork for incorporating Freudian psychology into advertising and public relation campaigns during the late 1920’s, yet most of his work has gone under the radar [1].
When the American bacon company Beech-Nut was losing sales in the 1920’s, it brought Bernays in to try and reverse the company’s fortunes. Bernays hired a physician to ask doctors across the country if a hearty breakfast, which included bacon, was scientifically desirable. Many of them said yes, and after the results were published, bacon sales at Beech-Nut boomed. By catering to consumers’ underlying desires for healthy diets, Bernays influenced the way we think about breakfast to this very day. He explains his observations on average consumers in his seminal work titled Propaganda, where he states:
“People are rarely aware of the real reasons which motivate their actions.” [2]
Christianity Today’s chart-topping new podcast, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, provides an instructive case study of what happens when a church’s leadership loses track of the motivation behind its actions. Host Mike Cosper tells the story of Mark Driscoll, the now-disgraced pastor of the former Mars Hill megachurch. The podcast brings together dozens of interviews, deep historical research, and audio clips from Driscoll himself to tell “the story of one church that grew from a handful of people to a movement, and then collapsed almost overnight.”
The scope of the podcast is large, yet the quote by Bernays resonates throughout and highlights the tragic reality of how the veil of fame and power can leave us deceived by abusive church leaders. Episode six of the podcast, titled “The Brand,” pulls this idea into focus through the lens of marketing and illuminates how Driscoll’s charismatic “brand” grew through an innovative team using Bernays-like techniques. [3]
Central to the episode is Jesse Bryan, who worked as part of the media team at Mars Hill when the church was first beginning to grow in the early 2000’s. This growth occurred simultaneously with the rise of the internet, creating new opportunities for media production within the church. Unlike televangelists of the past who relied on television broadcasts, the internet was a medium that was instantly trackable, targeted, and allowed for quick uploads at the click of a button.
Bryan and the entire media team quickly learned what sermon content performed well online and soon influenced Driscoll and the church to adapt to these methods. In their minds, these were harmless decisions — things such as sermon series titles or Driscoll’s clothing choices. But as time went on and Mars Hill gained more traction online, the team realized that they were no longer marketing the gospel through their slick video and podcast content — Mars Hill was really marketing Driscoll’s personality. Bryan states he remembers Driscoll, as he was rising to stardom, saying to him in complete seriousness, “I don’t know if you noticed or not, but I’m kind of a big deal.” It was at this moment that Bryan realized, in the words of Bernays, the “real reasons which motivated his actions” were not about the gospel but about elevating a narcissist.
In a piece I wrote for Claritas titled “Marketing Jesus,” I explored how the brand of a church can become wrapped up in a consumeristic, “the customer is always right” method of ministry. [4] Yet, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill shows how a church can get caught up not only in the customer but also in the product it is attempting to market — in this case, the product being Mark Driscoll, an authoritative, dynamic speaker with a dangerous ego.
In the book of Revelation, John rebukes the church in Ephesus for their acceptance of false teachers:
But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. [6]
Bryan remembers being on a church-funded trip creating video content in Turkey when he realized that he had “abandoned his first love,” Jesus, in his pursuit of the brand of Mars Hill. This episode of Mars Hill paints a picture of how leadership accountability as well as the virtue of temperance are essential parts of church growth and ministerial integrity. The grow-at-all-costs mindset, perpetuated by a celebrity presence in the modern internet age, led the team at Mars Hill to have their actions motivated by idolatrous reasons.
Branding is all about establishing value, and as Mars Hill grew from a Bible study to a megachurch, Driscoll’s brand began to value performance over pastoral duties. Cosper’s journalistic view into the world of Mars Hill reveals a church struggling between its first love of Jesus and the temptation of fame. The words of Edward Bernays are true and yet haunting: what are the real reasons that motivate my actions? In an idolatrous world where self-image is paramount and personal branding is encouraged, we must reckon with the fact that, like Mars Hill, the real reasons for our actions are often not focused on our first love, and the Father desperately wants us to fall back in love with Him.
NOTES
By the way, the work of Edward Bernays didn’t end with bacon and eggs. Many of his techniques for public relations were replicated and exploited by the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels to promote Hitler’s appalling vision of Germany. Bernays was disgraced and called a “professional poisoner of the public mind” by Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. [5] Ironically, the work of Bernays itself is an example that when the “real reasons” motivating our actions are not focused on goodness and truth, the actions that follow can be destructive.
SOURCES
https://www.thisiscapitalism.com/bacon-eggs-and-public-relations/
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/275170.Edward_L_Bernays
https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/rise-and-fall-of-mars-hill/rise-fall-mars-hill-podcast-mark-driscoll-brand.html
https://www.cornellclaritas.com/marketing-jesus
https://theconversation.com/the-manipulation-of-the-american-mind-edward-bernays-and-the-birth-of-public-relations-44393