Why does your church do things the way they do? Is it because you’ve carefully thought about the unique mission and message that God has imprinted on this specific church? Or is it because that’s how it’s always been done, or because that’s how some other church is doing it?

Last month, we began a series on church marketing. Now, church marketing is very different from secular marketing, which can be generally defined as the activities that lead up to a market transaction. Secular marketing philosophy is focused on transacting products and services with economic value, and, as we saw last month, this philosophy runs counter in almost every way to the Spirit of the Kingdom.

Our goal with this series, then, is not to try to shoehorn Kingdom activities into a worldly value system, but to find biblical principles that have been adopted by secular marketing, and redeem those practices for use by the local church.

As a starting point, we defined church marketing this way:

Church marketing is intentional, Spirit-led action influencing people toward becoming mature disciples of Christ.

This month, I’ll be focusing on church marketing being intentional. Many churches simply go through the motion week after week, without giving much thought to why they do what they do. Other churches try to adopt the cutting-edge practices of some leading churches without thinking about how they fit into their own church culture and the makeup and needs of their city or neighborhood. Frankly, most are not living up to their potential, missing the dream that God had when He called this local body into existence.

Being intentional means having a reason for doing each activity, and shaping each activity to maximize the Kingdom impact. To be effective in your church marketing, here are four questions that your church leaders should work through on a regular cadence, perhaps at an annual retreat or special prayer meeting:

1. What is God’s vision for this church? Church marketing is driven by God’s unique calling for this specific local body. For what eternal purpose did God create this church?

There are three things that every church has: values, vision, and style. Your church has these, even if you’ve never thought of it this way. Values are the assumptions and priorities that influence how ministry happens in your church. Vision is what you believe God desires your church to become. And style refers to the preferred ways of accomplishing the vision, which reflect your values.

Together, these make up your church’s culture, its unique ministry signature. It is outside of the scope of this article to help you through the process of determining God’s vision for your church—there are many excellent resources for guiding you in this area. (I highly recommend Visioneering, by Andy Stanley.) But because church marketing is driven by God’s vision for this specific local body, it’s important to be able to articulate the vision concisely.

2. Where is this church today, in relation to God’s vision? Your church has not yet become what God wants it to be. Where are you missing the mark? What areas of weakness do you see?

Take a look at your church budget, which will tell you what this church’s current priorities are. Then think about where volunteers are putting their time, which is another measure of what this church thinks is important today.

3. In which area is God leading us to focus resources? The answers to the first two questions will reveal a gap between the present and the future—in some cases, a chasm. Strategy is an intentional plan of action to get from who you are today to becoming who God wants you to be. And just like there are many ways to get from one part of town to another, there are many possible strategies to get from where you are today to where God wants you to be. There is a right strategy for your church, but it may not be the shortest route or the most obvious one. The right strategy is the one God wants you to take, which is often revealed by looking for where He is already moving in the body.

An effective strategy will allocate your church’s limited resources in ways that will maximize the movement toward becoming the church God called you to be. It will help set priorities for this ministry season, and should influence budget decisions.

4. How do our church’s current activities fit within our strategy? Being intentional means regularly asking why we do things the way we do them. Any organization run by volunteers tends to get into a fixed way of doing things, because people show up and do what they’ve gotten in the habit of doing. In this environment, change requires extraordinary effort, and shouldn’t be done on a whim. But if an activity no longer makes sense, given God’s vision for the church and His strategy to get there, then it needs to be changed.

Why do you need to do this every year or two? Because things change: the ministry environment, the gift-mix of your leadership team, the age makeup of your congregation. Your church is dynamic, and if you are not making adjustments to how you do ministry, then you’ll miss some of the opportunities God has for this body.

Being intentional means asking why we do things the way we do them, and making adjustments when it’s clear God is moving in another way. What does God want to teach this body of believers? How does He want us to grow this month and this year? Is there a specific population God has positioned you to reach? What is the best way to do that, given your resources? Asking those kinds of questions, and acting on the answers, is what being intentional is all about.

Remember, though, your church is really God’s church. It’s possible to answer these four questions without involving God at all. But that would miss a key component of church marketing: being Spirit-led. And we’ll explore that more next month.

Larry Witzel is Vice President for Product Development at SermonView. A former pastor, Larry has 15 years of marketing and public relations experience, and for the last 8 years has used his gifts to help church leaders communicate more effectively. Larry earned his MBA in marketing from the University of Washington, and lives with his wife and daughter in Vancouver, Wash.