Faith Integration in Digital and Social Media Marketing

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Christians have shared their faith since Jesus’ ascension into heaven at the end of His earthly ministry, over two thousand years ago. Through the rise and fall of empires, new technologies, and social and cultural change, the message of belief in Jesus Christ has continued. Where language and communication adapt and shift, so too is the sharing of faith.

Thus, in an era of digital communication and social media, the Christian faith has followed. Digital means of sharing that God came as a man to die for the sins of humanity opens new avenues for this great news.

Christian digital and social media marketers see the opportunity to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the digital age. Campaigns like He Gets Us leverage the interconnectedness of digital platforms for advertisements concerning the person of Jesus. Christians have a great opportunity to fulfill the Great Commission to “go and make disciples of all nations” through worldwide connectivity.

Understanding Christian Values

The Christian faith is defined, of course, by doctrines and beliefs, but also through values. Some Christian values spread throughout the Bible are honesty, integrity, compassion, perseverance, and excellence. These values are helpful for marketers to integrate into their practice, and to grow in moral character as they conduct business.

Honesty

“Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but those who act faithfully are his delight” (Prov. 12:22). The Bible clearly reveals the benefits of honesty by displaying the harsh repercussions of dishonesty. Stories of shrewd dealers and backstabbers connect with businessmen today as poor examples of how to treat others.

Integrity

“The integrity of the upright guides them, but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them” (Prov. 11:3). Integrity keeps marketers, and people in general, free from risky and detrimental situations. Having the integrity to do the right thing no matter who is watching goes a long way for productivity, good relationships, and contentment.

Compassion

“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Eph. 4:32). Compassion is a character trait often lacking from a businessperson’s repertoire. While marketers may create content that attempts to relate to their audience, they can truly improve their customer relationships by fostering true compassion for them.

Perseverance & Patience

“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (Jas. 1:2-4). Perseverance and patience through hard seasons is incredibly difficult. The Christian faith acknowledges this while recognizing the rewards for the periods of growth in the hard times, something struggling marketers can learn from.

Excellence

“But as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in all earnestness, and in our love for you—see that you excel in this act of grace also” (2 Cor. 8:7). God desires His people to be excellent in what they set out for, particularly in grace and love. Nonetheless, Christian marketers can work as to the most excellent Lord.

Challenges and Ethical Dilemmas

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Digital and social media marketing capitalize on the cultural moment of digital media. Marketers meet customers right where they are by connecting directly to their social media feeds and search engine results. Marketers aligning Christian values with their practice must navigate additional challenges and ethical dilemmas like respecting others’ beliefs, cordially responding to criticisms, and keeping a clear mission.

Respecting Beliefs

In a world of subjective experience, everybody has a set of beliefs and values. Even while Christianity has a set of orthodox beliefs and values set objective truth from the Bible, there are variations within its core beliefs. Christian marketers subscribe to a specific belief system but must also respect the range of faiths across the globe. While believing in and sharing one objective truth, promoting these ideas must honor others who see differently. An example would be to promote an event at a church without including unnecessary negative comments about other religions.

Responding to Criticisms

Sharing opinions or beliefs always opens the door to critique. For thoughts and ideas to be freely shared, pushback must be permitted. Promoting the Christian faith, Scripture, and Christian values on social media can be controversial to many audiences. Therefore, Christian marketing professionals or influencers must have a strategy for responding to these criticisms. Responses should reflect the same Christian values and faithful communication of the good news of Jesus as every other Christian promotion. Tim Barnett, an academic preacher and apologist, outlines the proper way to handle criticism is to first isolate the criticism, assess whether or not the criticism has merit, and engage the criticism appropriately if necessary.

Keeping Sight of the Mission

Christian marketers and their campaigns need a defined mission to reach viewers. While Jesus in His Great Commission clearly defines a mission to “go and make disciples,” Christian marketing campaigns may do this in different ways. Regardless of the content of the mission, it is far more clear to stick to the mission than to falter from the course without formally reviewing a campaign’s mission. As cited by Terry Austin of Baptist News Global What Would Jesus Do? (WWJD) is a large campaign that lost sight of its mission to point people to imitating Christ and morphed into offering a vague ethical solution to Christian challenges.

Successful Faith-Driven Campaigns

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He Gets Us is a current Christian marketing campaign that spans digital and social media platforms. The Gospel Coalition describes that the campaign primarily promotes Jesus and Christian ideas to meet modern American culture with a different view of Jesus than modern society portrays, in a way that “gets” people. The ads attempt to bridge a gap between a popular misunderstanding of Jesus’ character, and a more approaching and sympathetic Jesus as found in the Bible.

While the He Gets Us campaign does have many critics, it also has a lot of support. According to REACHRIGHT Studios, the campaign is backed by ardently orthodox and conservative Christians, many of whom are prominent businesspeople. These donors to the campaign have utilized both Christian and non-Christian skilled marketers for extensive market research, idea generation, ad creation, marketing strategy formulation, and user follow-up and engagement. Thus, while trying to separate the true person of Jesus from modern bias and tradition, the campaign still implements true Christian values into their advertisements.

Criticisms of the He Gets Us campaign have somewhat tarnished the brand’s reputation. According to Aja Romano of Vox controversial Super Bowl ad that featured groups with significant cultural and ideological differences washing each others’ feet caused an uproar from both unbelieving and Christian viewers. The backlash to an ad like this can hurt the impact of other ads that the campaign promotes after it.

Ethical Marketing Practices

There are industry-accepted ethical marketing practices that resonate with Christian values. Contrasting this with Christian values that can be applied to business, marketers apply concepts like transparency, authenticity, and customer-centricity in their work.

Transparency and Authenticity

Religious marketing has a distinctly different purpose from most other marketing. Oftentimes, this marketing seeks to promote events, meetings, ideas, and beliefs for customer benefit rather than selling anything to them. Therefore, religious organizations, especially Christian ones, do not need to water down or avoid topics in their marketing that they should share. These groups should authentically and transparently communicate who they are without fear.

People who are vehemently against a true Christian message will be whenever the Bible is preached with integrity, no matter what the marketing originally says. Christian marketing on digital and social media channels should not make their message unnecessarily accessible to audiences. Promotions should transparently display truth, recognizing that truth is more important than access. Christian marketers often forget this fact and come off as inauthentic.

Customer-centricity

Christian marketing should focus on putting Christ first. The message of Jesus as the savior of humanity is the greatest news that marketers can share. But just as Christ prominently elevated people from their brokenness through His incredible message of salvation, so too should Christian marketing promote the betterment of their customers. Campaigns must ethically lead viewers to biblical truth and encourage them through their messages. Placing customers and their lives at the center of the campaign prevents organizations from turning to their own best wishes to profit off of emotional religious subjects.

Balancing Faith and Profitability

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The intersection of faith and profitable returns is difficult for Christian organizations, with many companies and campaigns avoiding it altogether. While no statistics are available for the percentage of “Christian” companies that are non-profits, according to Cause IQ, of the nearly two million nonprofit organizations, 40% are religious organizations. This shows that many Christian organizations emphasize giving and philanthropic efforts more than generating profits from their operations.

Christian marketing efforts should honor the character values of honesty, integrity, compassion, perseverance, and excellence. These values change the focus of marketing efforts from generating wealth through any means, to approaching promotions and sales in a caring and careful way. Profitable businesses should not sacrifice any of these things to succeed. Particularly, leveraging religious themes to make an easy dollar through emotional marketing is a poor tactic that Christian marketers must avoid.

Nonetheless, Christian organizations that delve into digital and social media marketing may seek to use their revenue differently, possibly to create shareholder value. Grand Canyon University (GCU) is a large organization that seeks profitability while balancing its Christian faith. According to Natalie Schwartz of Higher Ed Dive, the school is under stricter regulations than nonprofit colleges because of this designation, but it allows the institution to give a sizable portion of its revenue to its former owner. Another drawback to this model is that GCU cannot receive federal financial aid, yet its many donors and students help offset that missing revenue stream.

Leveraging Social Media for Faith Integration

Social media is an excellent place to promote ideas, products, and entertainment. Social media platforms foster dialogue between diverse people from across the globe. Intuitively, social media is a ripe place for introducing faith to new yet large audiences. Christian businesses can leverage social media marketing by using the following tools.

Video

Short-form video has taken social media by storm since TikTok came on the scene in 2017. Christian marketers, particularly churches or other large ministries with featured speakers, can create snippets from sermons, podcasts, or other discussions that give a glimpse into their organization’s entire gallery. Platforms like YouTube and Facebook can also house livestreams and long-form video content of entire talks from featured speakers.

Verse and Sermon Quote Graphics

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Churches, Christian speakers, and common Christians can share influential Bible verses or quotes from influential Christian speakers and leaders on their social media feeds. Instagram stories offer a temporary way to share a “verse of the day” or a quick inspirational or inspiring message for viewers. Whether a picture of a Bible or book underline, or a custom graphic, these words offer an effective way to share the Gospel and personalize it for viewers for Christian marketers.

Listening

Social media is a constant conversation utilizing images, words, and sounds to communicate. Christian marketers can be most effective by stopping to listen and care about what others care about, rather than falling into the trap of promoting their best interests. Finding interests and connecting through social media can create new avenues for sharing one’s Christian faith.

Personal Reflection

Faith permeates the lives of Christians, and it is natural for them to share their beliefs with others. As Christian organizations develop, for-profit and non-profit, they enter marketing across digital and social media channels. Christian values and biblical identity are integral to these organizations and their marketing efforts. Marketers must stabilize the tension between properly incorporating faith into their marketing and using faith-based messages to profit from customers.

I am incredibly intrigued by social media as an easier, harder, or more confusing way to share the Christian faith. I see that some people use it to share the Gospel and others to promote pithy and simple statements of faith without substance. I want to be intentional with every use of my time, particularly to share the good news of Jesus and salvation in him, but I find myself wasting time on social media. While some Christian organizations seek to interrupt people’s social media feeds to promote Christianity, others integrate it with other entertainment in the app.

References

Austin, T. (2021, May 6). The foolishness of WWJD – Baptist News Global. Baptist News Global. https://baptistnews.com/article/the-foolishness-of-wwjd/

Barnett, T. (2019, December 10). How to deal with criticism. Stand to Reason. https://www.str.org/w/how-to-deal-with-criticism

Carter, J. (2023, March 2). The FAQs: What you should know about the ‘He Gets Us’ campaign. The Gospel Coalition. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/faqs-he-gets-us-campaign/

Cause IQ. (2020, March 5). How many nonprofits are in the US? https://www.causeiq.com/insights/how-many-nonprofits-in-the-us/

Costello, T. (2024, March 29). Who is Behind ‘He Gets Us’ Ad Campaign and Why? REACHRIGHT. https://reachrightstudios.com/who-is-behind-he-gets-us/

Romano, A. (2024, February 15). The “He Gets Us” Christian Super Bowl ads — and the backlash to them — explained. Vox. https://www.vox.com/culture/24073780/he-gets-us-super-bowl-ad-foot-washing-controversy

Schwartz, N. (2022, December 2). Judge rejects Grand Canyon University’s bid to overturn its for-profit status. Higher Ed Dive. https://www.highereddive.com/news/judge-rejects-grand-canyon-university-for-profit-status-lawsuit/637913/