What does American retail and business strategy have to offer the declining Mainline religions? First, an undifferentiated strategy of serving “everyone” is doomed to failure. Kmart, Sears and JC Penney could not create a differentiated strategy. They died.
Marshall Field had a better approach.
Second, the mavens of corporate strategy offer a simple framework for addressing the “needs” today. Michael Porter is the king of corporate strategy.
Treacy and Wiersema consolidated this into just 3 dimensions.
A successful, disciplined organization must choose. It cannot be “all things to all people”. It must choose one of 3 general strategies. It must choose a subset of customers, not everyone.
Businesses are very highly motivated to find the most effective strategies and tactics.
One effective strategy is “operational excellence”. Be so cost effective at delivering your goods and services that you can charge the lowest price and still make a great profit. For a church, this would mean:
Low contributions, donations, tithing and specific opportunity funding.
Low price of entry. No creed. No adult baptism.
Low ongoing commitments. Low church attendance. Low volunteering. Low service. Low small group engagement. Limited liability.
Low constraints. No confession. No evaluation. Low prayer.
This is a critical dimension. Do you want to retain nominal members? There is a possibility that they will become engaged.
Do you wish to offer “cheap grace”? Lower the bar to entry, but higher the bar to membership?
Product innovation is a second winning strategy. Define a religious perspective that is different from those of others.
More liberal versus conservative.
Emphasize thinking, feeling or doing.
Emphasize modern prophets and interpreters or older ones.
Internal belief versus social response and participation.
Earthly life or eternal salvation.
Mysticism.
Community.
Love.
Deliver specific services: children, adults, poor, immigrant, counseling, small groups. adult education.
Full service.
Large or small. Known or invisible.
Third, an organization can emphasize “customer intimacy”. We know what you want and will deliver it in personalized portions.
For a church, this can mean:
Smaller congregations.
More “congregational care” staffing and volunteers.
Greater emphasis on small groups and frequent volunteer participation.
More “intrusive” style of reaching out.
Different services for different life cycle ages.
Treacy and Wiersema really emphasized the second and third strategic dimension. They argued that you should “choose” your primary customer base. Like the failed retailers, a central, “all of the above” strategy is doomed to failure. Choose a customer group and organize your products and services to exactly, precisely meet their needs. Customer groups could be defined and served:
by age, life cycle.
geography.
class, income, profession.
active or passive religious participants.
historical religious background or skeptics, secularists.
long-timers or newcomers.
religious views. close fit or searching. liberal or conservative.
activity or engagement level.
Is this segment growing or shrinking?
Does it greatly need church services or is it apparently self-sufficient?
Do the existing assets and programs of the church meet the group’s needs?
In the corporate world, the trick was to identify and serve the groups that could buy the most and deliver the greatest profit for existing and adjacent products and services. In the religious world, the key is to realistically determine what an existing congregation and denomination can offer to a world that expects its needs to be met.
https://religionunplugged.com/news/2023/6/12/just-how-bad-is-denominational-decline
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-unlikely-rebound-of-mainline-protestantism
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