It all began in the sacristy at my parish. I had worked at the parish for about eight years at that point and had just graduated college six months before. The pastor knew that I was looking for a new job, since they couldn't afford to hire me on full time at the parish, and asked me what I was hoping to do. I'd done an internship in marketing in college and loved it, but expressed that I didn't want to stop working for the Church. He sat there for a moment, and then said something that I have lived by ever since: "Why don't you go into church marketing?" I decided that saying it was because I didn't know that was even a thing was probably not the answer he was looking for. "You've got a background in both," he pointed out. "Because in marketing for the church, Jesus is the brand." Mind blown Why had I never thought of evangelization in this way before? It makes so much sense - the whole point of marketing is to sell someone on something. The whole point of evangelization is to sell someone on Christ. And that got me thinking - what if we applied marketing principles evangelization? Without taking away the beauty of the faith, what if we marketed our churches the way an advertiser would market any other product or service?
A lot of Catholics shy away from marketing - isn't that just for annoying people? - but without marketing, I truly believe the Catholic Church will die out. We have to start learning how to effectively talk about Christ, and until we do that, we won't be able to be good evangelizers.
And that's how Gloriam, and our business philosophy, was born. It might have taken another two years for the business to really take fruition, but to be honest, I'm not sure I otherwise ever would have thought of that correlation.
I'm so glad my pastor did.