Conflict Winter 1993

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Native Trends

The Popcorn Report by Faith Popcorn, Doubleday, $22.50.

Reviewed by Bruce L. Shelley, preaching team pastor, Bear Valley Church, Denver, Colorado

Popcorn is the hottest name in marketing.

The Popcorn Report is the latest product of consultant Faith Popcorn for her Fortune 500 clients and other market-driven companies. Faith is the prophetess who gave us, in the mid-1970s, the term cocooning for the stay-at-home syndrome. She also predicted the bust of New Coke, the rise of 4-wheel-drives, and the home-delivery rush.

But what is this marketing wizard doing in the pages of LEADERSHIP?

The Popcorn Report may be the best available summary of today's social tastes and trends. Popcorn calls them "psychographic shifts."

Some may question the wisdom of church leaders consulting marketing experts. "Isn't that like consulting a psychic?" Some consider the mere suggestion of marketing ministry as defiling the holy place.

And I am prepared, even eager, to grant that a ministry driven only by market concerns is in trouble up to its wheel covers. But dismissing popular impulses carte blanche is to operate with our eyes closed. We can't pretend we aren't affected by our culture.

Even the most anti-marketing churches have a sign in front of their building. Most use church letterhead. Few have shunned the use of the Yellow Pages. How can churches not minister in America's society of choice without considering the way ideas are dispensed and institutions function in today's world?

America is a consumer society and, as Popcorn preaches, when we change what we buy and how we buy it, we change who we are. Popcorn's trends force us, as church leaders, outside our sanctuaries, to what the public "feels" and "wants." She pushes us to answer ...

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