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[b]The prophet motive[/b]
Evangelical tract distributors use marketing skills to woo the faithful away from mainline churches
BY ELAINE O'CONNOR
Les stands on the east side of Bathurst, in front of the subway station. All day, streetcars swerve into the station and cars race to beat the lights as the large man bobs his head and shakes a tin. From this patch of pavement, he hands out religious pamphlets and takes in donations every Wednesday, wearing a safari vest and buttons that read "Jesus loves you" and "I may be slow, but I'm smart."
Across the street, but a world away, is the Catholic Information Centre. Behind it stands the tower of St. Peter's Church, a banner slapping its side: "Be Reconciled to God. We Welcome Returning Catholics." Two different sides of the street, two different approaches, one goal: to plant faith in the inner city. But it's not the folks in the brick building who are succeeding so much as the scruffy man on the street.
A few blocks east, Tom stands on the north side of Bloor at Walmer, waving his scriptures at passersby who mostly ignore him. Tracts, flyers, litter -- it's all the same to them. Tom is used to this; he's been at it 20 years. A thick, greying man, he sat in a church pew for most of his 69 years, but he admits in his Eastern European accent, "I just went to church like store." Then the Spirit woke him and he began to speak in tongues.
The Spirit was bought, indirectly, from American missionaries at Tom's Toronto Airport Pentecostal Church. Tom gets his scriptures, stamped with a cross and offering God's Simple Plan of Salvation, from his church, which buys them for 3 cents apiece from the Americans. "Be sure you are saved," they entreat. "Do not trust your feelings. They change."
So did Tom, who won't speak about the time before he was saved, and looks around suspiciously when he's asked for his last name. "People call you names all the time," he says. "Sometimes they try to hit you or throw things. There are many possessed by demons." The ones who aren't sometimes take a tract. "I go where the Lord sends me," Tom explains. "I'm satisfied to do anything in the Lord. The Lord leads me."
Other than that, there is seemingly no strategy to street preaching. Yet these pamphleteers are front-line salesmen for a Christian publishing empire driven by the prophet motive.
"Every morning I ask where God wants me to go," says Patrick, a small, brittle Englishman. "Usually He tells me to go to Bloor and Runnymede. Today He said, 'Go to Honest Ed's.'" So that's where Patrick is, clutching his pamphlets like a deck of cards.
"Are you looking forward to the afterlife?" he asks suddenly. Patrick is. He found his way to Canada in '76, then got lost in drink. He found God in a Pentecostal church in Toronto.
"I speak in tongues," he says. "I can draw demons out of people." He gazes over the intersection. "It's very fruitful here. There are lots of people looking for something." Then, muttering, "I have to go to McDonald's," he leaves quickly, as if rushing to get in before the doors shut.
But what is closing in this neighbourhood is not fast-food franchises, but churches where men like Les, Tom and Patrick, as well as struggling couples and uprooted families, can go for community, guidance and faith. Membership in traditional urban Christian churches has been dropping, because demographics have changed and churches haven't.
Street preachers understand that the way to reach believers is to speak their language -- and the medium is advertising. As the Church's influence in urban areas has eroded, religious consumerism has risen to take its place. Christian publishers, not to mention entertainment companies and broadcasters, have an eye on the Biblical bottom line, and slowly churches are realizing that they, too, have to market faith and reposition their entire product line -- sermons, ceremonies, social services -- or risk losing their market share.
Scripture Gift Mission Canada has gained a chunk of this market. SGM pamphlets are the Mercedes of tracts -- slick and glossy, with full-colour graphics and few spelling mistakes. Some pamphleteers distribute them exclusively because of their appeal. Within the publishing para-church there is brand loyalty, but drawing this kind of devotion takes planning.
"There is a whole process," explains Jim Wright, one of two employees at SGM Canada's Markham office. The material is produced in England, where committees ensure each tract is 90 to 95 per cent scripture and evaluate its cultural relevance, language and graphics. Then, before the Word of God is released to the public, it is test-marketed.
It's a winning formula. "In Canada last year we distributed 400,000 tracts," Wright says. "Worldwide it was 24 million." Wright says his clients are mainly Baptists and Pentecostals, and they need not send cheques: SGM Canada is "non-profit-making" and has survived on donations and bequests since 1947.
Still, compared to the Canadian Bible Society, SGM is in the burning bush leagues. The CBS, a non-profit organization founded in 1904, distributes up to 20 per cent of the scripture products in Canada. Its pamphlets are short and sweet, for good reason. "Sometimes people aren't prepared to read the whole thing," says distribution manager David Doncan. "We're fighting the culture, really, because there are so many distractions. So the pamphlets are in bite-sized pieces, and the scriptures are in modern language."
Doncan says the pamphlets are aimed at people with the literacy level of readers of The Toronto Sun or People. As he puts it, "They are simple enough for a child to read."
This strategy has won CBS a thriving business: last year it mailed out 5 million pamphlets, 625,000 of them to central Ontario, and saw gross revenues of $11.8 million.
It would seem that large Christian companies are living off individual donations. Fifty-eight per cent of their revenue, about $7 million, comes from contributions, while 23 per cent comes from legacies. Sales of Bibles to distributors account for another 11 per cent, and the rest rolls in as interest on investments. The faithful, it seems, are financially solvent.
"We're very mission-driven," Doncan boasts, his voice swelling as if his figures were tracking the growth of God's own army. Sure enough, he tries to add one more Christian soldier. "Have you heard of the Unionville Alliance Church?" he asks. "You should come to our Sunday service -- it will really blow your mind."
Blowing the minds of non-believers is at the top of most Christian business agendas. Faith is a four-letter word these days -- the only groups showing a steady increase are evangelical Protestant sects and para-religious groups that redefine what a church is altogether.
But the scope of commercial religious publishing is astounding, and growing. Pamphlets from Calgary's New Life Printing Service, Kitchener's Christ the Way Publications Inc. and New Brunswick's Gospel Tract and Bible Society can be found on the streets of Toronto.
On the Evangelical Tract Distributors Web site, believers can order to suit every mood -- from Sharing Christ Through Tract Evangelism to Why Am I Here? For youth, there are 1950s-style primers: A Street Meeting and Jimmy Watson and When Your Wild Oats Ripen. For sinners, the forbidding Awful Death of a Young Infidel and Doom of a Drunkard drive home the point. The Alberta-based company stocks almost 650 -- tracts for New Year's, Halloween and Thanksgiving; tracts on cults, drugs and the Second Coming; tracts in Cree, Urdu and Maltese; tracts in large print for seniors and verse for children.
With such a cornucopia of fast-food communion on offer, how can traditional churches compete? Many are finding they can't. The Faith Temple on Broadview is a perfect example of urban church decay. When its founding pastor died a few years ago, most of its adherents, who had travelled from Pickering and Unionville to hear him speak, lost interest. Now the church is struggling to keep its remaining 70 members. Church administrator Rob Jackson says that over the past nine years he has watched the church lose its relevance to the community.
Churches with the largest losses, says Jackson, are downtown Protestant branches whose affluent members have fled to the 905 region, and losing middle-income families means losing their collection-plate contributions. Last fall, in an attempt to boost sagging attendance, the Faith Temple congregation went door-to-door with ads for the church. "I guess you could call it a marketing tool," Jackson says, "but I don't think it will work."
In Regent Park, Capt. Geoff Ryan, a fourth-generation Salvation Army officer, and his wife, Capt. Sandra Ryan, are trying to make their church work without handing out pamphlets. After "church planting" (building new congregations) in Russia for nine years, the couple is now trying Regent Park. According to Ryan, residents have access to social services, but don't have a sense of community, particularly a faith-based one.
Ryan says pamphleteering is more fulfilling for the converted than for the preached to. "Someone can come down from the suburbs to Yonge Street and say, 'That's what sin looks like,' and hand out tracts and feel good about 'saving' people, but personally, I think it's next to useless," he insists. "I mean, are you going to change somebody's life through a piece of paper they get on the street? I doubt it. You need a church setting, where people can get hooked and observe how what a person says jibes with how they live." That's why the Ryans live in the area.
Yet ministry at even the most basic level is challenging in a district composed of over 40 ethnic groups. Churches in the area have tended to splinter faith groups along ethnic lines. The Ryans' new congregation aims to bring them together.
At its first meeting in March, the Regent Park church preached in seven languages. With the aid of translation devices, the English sermon could be understood by a Tamil family in the front row, a Russian woman seated behind them and a Cantonese couple on her left, while stragglers in the back could follow along in their Spanish and French-language Bibles. But this sort of outreach doesn't come cheap -- the church will eat up about $150,000 in its first year.
"It's not a matter of building a flock and keeping it together," Ryan explains. "People are fluid, especially in the inner city. We'll minister to whomever we get."
Which, essentially, is the approach used by Les, who stands at his post, ministering to whomever he gets. Because God knows how many people on his corner need to be saved.
ARE TRADITIONAL CHURCHES LOSING GROUND?
BY AMY GAJARIA & PATRICIA LIMA
ROMAN CATHOLIC ARCHDIOCESE OF TORONTO
INCREASE/DECREASE: Based on "educated guesses" and judging from growing parishes, membership has been on the rise, says Suzanne Scorsone, communications director.
WHY: "Many of the immigrants who come here are from countries with large Catholic populations," says Scorsone. "We're part of Canada's open door."
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF CANADA
INCREASE/DECREASE: Toronto-area membership has dropped by more than 5,000 since 1991.
WHY: "People are doing more church 'shopping'... visiting church to church but not becoming members," says Keith Knight, associate secretary..
ANGLICAN DIOCESE OF TORONTO
INCREASE/DECREASE: Membership has remained stable at some 40,000 for the past 10 years.
WHY: "A lot of young families are coming back to the church because they want some sort of spiritual direction for their children," says communications assistant Ann Castro.
LUTHERAN CHURCH OF CANADA
INCREASE/DECREASE: Toronto-area membership has dropped to 2,000, down 600 from 1995's total.
WHY: "There's a general apathy toward the church," says Diane Engles, administrative secretary.
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SI Moderator - Greg Gordon
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