‘We aim to provide excellent service to everyone who comes to church!’: Marketing mega-churches in Singapore

Abstract

The discourse and techniques of marketing have permeated many non-business areas of social life, including religion. In this paper, we explore the implications of this trend for the practice of the Christian church. Using two cases of mega-churches in Singapore, we show how marketing fosters a re-conceptualization of religion where religious organizations seek to build their ‘brands’ through diversified offerings. Marketing may enable religious organizations to grow, but the cases also show how it can fundamentally change the practice of religion itself.

Dopamine D4 receptor gene and religious affiliation correlate with dictator game altruism in males and not females: evidence for gender-sensitive gene × culture interaction

“…Our results provide evidence for half of this hypothesis, the “vantage sensitivity” (Manuck et al, 2011 ; Pluess and Belsky, 2013 ; Sweitzer et al, 2013 ). Specifically, we suggest the notion that non-4R/4R repeats confer an advantage by having its carriers being more prosocial when energized by the positive spirit of Christianity and its tradition of charity and tithing especially in the Singapore mega churches (Yip and Ainsworth, 2013 ). In other words, the non-4R/4R genotypes were more responsive to Christian norms promoting fairness and discouraging selfishness.…”

“…Interestingly, converts stated that Christianity had a distinct, comprehensible set of texts and organized structure, with regular services, “Sunday school,” Bible study, notably tithing (Goh, 2011 ) and fellowship. Buddhist and Tao religious observance involves relatively infrequence attendance of religious services (Buddhanet, 2008 ), suggesting that Buddhism and Taoism “market” religion less effectively than the Christian churches in Singapore (Yip and Ainsworth, 2013 ) and the growth of mega-churches in Singapore is especially noteworthy (Chong and Hui, 2013 ). Hence, we suggest that the differences we observed between the Christians and B-T group is understandable despite apparently similar theological and theoretical attitudes toward charity.…”

The parable of the Feast (Lk 14:16b–23): Breaking down boundaries and discerning a theological–spatial justice agenda

“…Megachurch pastors tend to have some sort of celebrity status (cf. Paparazzi pastors 2011; Yip & Ainsworth 2013). During our visits, many people placed an emphasis on the importance of the senior pastor.…”

Latin-American and Asiatic neo-Protestantisms: A comparative study

“…However, it seems very important to note this difference in believers' social conditions to appreciate the diversity of the new discursive marketing techniques that megachurches are using to recruit adherents. This allows us to see to what extent the sermon content in evangelical churches aimed at enticing recruits or creating loyalty has changed from the predication of an ascetic attitude in daily life (Weber, 1964) to the promotion of the consumption of all material and spiritual goods as new forms of salvation (Yip and Ainsworth;Maddox, 2012Maddox, , 2013. In these texts we note that the mega-churches are using marketing discourse in order to obtain results in the sense of what they are aiming at for their congregations.…”