It Pays to Advertise

"CAN YOU TEACH HIM THE NEW MATH? Probably not," said the two-column ad in the Washington Post last week. "But trained school teachers can. Can you teach him the Bible? Perhaps. But our trained Sunday School teachers ... can do it better." At the bottom was a list of the 22 United Church of Christ parishes in the Washington area that teach the Bible according to the denomination's new $1,000,000 Sunday School curriculum.

Like many another church recently, the United Church of Christ has decided that it pays to advertise. Two years ago the United Presbyterian Church commissioned a series of radio spots by Stan Freberg. The Unitarians have acquired a substantial quota of converts over the years with low-keyed ads in magazines that begin: "Are You a Unitarian Without Knowing It?" And long before any of these, the Knights of Columbus began sponsoring magazine ads giving once-over-lightly explanations of Roman Catholic doctrine. BUT WHY THE CANDLES, HOLY WATER AND BEADS? headlines one of their ads.

The United Church publicity campaign is intended as much to explain and identify the denomination as to gain converts. Although it is a 1957 merger of the venerable Congregationalists and the Evangelical and Reformed Church, the liberal United Church is still confused by many people with the fundamentalist Churches of Christ. And in Washington, a city of high mobility, many United Church parishes are losing members.

The ads are printed not on the church-news page, but alongside supermarket and department-store advertising. Future ads will describe the denomination's colleges, mission work and role in race relations. "If it works in Washington, and it looks like it will," says the United Church's Communications Director Everett Parker, "we will move it to other cities."

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