New Life Downtown

"ARE YOU ALL ALONE IN THE CITY? Everyone needs to 'belong.' . . . If you want to find the secret of escaping loneliness, the church can show you the most satisfying way never to be lonely again."

Thus began an advertising campaign for Cincinnati's Episcopal Christ Church designed to meet the crisis of the city church. For active church life has followed the shift to suburbia, leaving the smoke-blackened downtown edifices behind to minister to dwindling congregations. Last year Christ Church decided to buck the trend, put up a new $1,500,000 church on East Fourth Street in the same downtown parish that it had served for 120 years. While the church was abuilding, Bishop Henry Wise Hobson of the Diocese of Southern Ohio received a grant ($5,000 a year for five years) from the Episcopal Council to study the problem of reaching new people.

At this point a Christ Church parishioner named Leonard M. Sive took over. Sive, an advertising man, had long been wondering what could be done with consumer appeal in church advertising instead of the customary institutional copy. In collaboration with Rector Morris Arnold he worked out a series of two-column, 12-in. display ads for Cincinnati newspapers. Each ad carried a picture of Christ Church's Rector Arnold, and the invitation to "come in and talk it over." Sample headlines: "DO YOU FEEL NOBODY NEEDS YOU?" "IS IT PROPER TO JOIN A CHURCH TO MEET PEOPLE?" "DO YOU REALLY WANT YOUR CHILDREN TO BELIEVE IN GOD? (90% of what your children learn comes from your example)."

Now two months old, the campaign has pulled an average of one inquiry a day--about half of them resulting in interviews and many of these leading to new churchgoers. Other Cincinnati churches are delighted with the nondenominational appeal. Said Bishop Hobson: "Downtown churches have a situation to face in which it is necessary to be ready for real adventure. The great problem is reaching the unchurched. This seems to be doing it."

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