The Sales Approach

Until a couple of months ago, tall, sandy-mustached Willard A. Pleuthner was only a vice president of a big Manhattan advertising agency (Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn Inc.). Last week dazed Adman Pleuthner was trying to adjust himself to the fact that he had suddenly become an important layman-consultant to the country's Protestant churches.

Every day letters stream into his office on Madison Avenue posing all kinds of church problems. In his spare time he is making radio, TV and church appearances to discuss religious affairs. On Sunday of this week, Episcopalian Pleuthner preached a sermon at All Saints' Episcopal Church in Harrison, N.Y. and a few days later was scheduled to appear on the Tex and Jinx show. Reason for Adman Pleuthner's new role: his current book, Building Up Your Congregation (Wilcox & Follett; $2.50).

Dangerous Dignity. Like many another churchgoing businessman, Bill Pleuthner was surprised by the promotional ignorance of ministers and church boards, whose efforts to get religion across to the laymen often seemed to him pitifully unskilled. But instead of just grousing about it and staying away from church, Pleuthner wrote a book.

Building Up Your Congregation warns its readers of "the dangerous dignity of church boards." The board members of churches, he says, "seem to forget that according to the New Testament, thousands of followers were attracted to Christ by what would today be considered undignified miracles--undignified acts of healing. Can you imagine the average church board being asked to approve such miracles as the turning of water into wine, or feeding the multitude on two fishes and five loaves of bread?" One of the chief weaknesses of church boards, according to Adman Pleuthner, is that they have too many bankers, lawyers, doctors and retired businessmen and too few "sales managers, advertising men, and active business executives on the way up the ladder of success." What's wrong with the bankers and lawyers? They "achieved success by having people come to them for help and not by going out and selling their services to people who needed them."

Turning his back on "dangerous dignity," Pleuthner urges churches to approach the spreading of the Gospel with the same combination of hardheadedness and imagination that B.B.D. & O. uses to spread the word about Swan Soap and Blackstone Cigars. Goals for regular, continued growth in membership should be set; the neighborhood should be carefully surveyed by questionnaire and canvasser to determine age and income groups, interests, reasons for coming to church and for staying away. Then ingenuity should be applied to give a fillip to the old, familiar routines.

Good Promotion. One of the most practical methods, suggests Pleuthner, is to glamorize the regular Sunday services between the great church festivals of Christmas and Easter by dedicating them to special groups and purposes. Examples: Founders' Day Sunday ("Why not honor those families that founded your church?"); Good Neighbor Sunday (special letters of invitation from the minister to all members of the neighborhood) ; Medical Sunday ("Reserve the front pews for families of doctors or nurses"); Flower Sunday ("when due tribute is paid to God for His gift of flowers to our world").

These special Sunday services, writes Pleuthner, are "like business promotions." They have "a specific and understandable appeal to definite groups of prospects . . . prospective churchgoers . . . No involved explanations are necessary."

Churches should settle upon a basic theme and plug it wherever possible. Example: "Churchgoing Families Are Happier Families." Pleuthner's book is filled with small hints to ministers, e.g., put church bulletin boards at right angles rather than parallel to the street to assure greater readership; end up sermons with "what-to-do-about-it" suggestions.

Both Pleuthner and his publishers are surprised by the book's success. A first edition of 9,600 was sold out nine weeks after publication and a second printing of 5,000 is now on the way. One Episcopal bishop has sent a copy to each of the 55 ministers in his diocese as a Christmas present; the Pulpit Book Club reports it has had the largest sale of any of its selections in years. But Bill Pleuthner, who is turning all profits over to charity, modestly disclaims the credit. Says he: "It's being promoted by the Man Upstairs."

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