Product Life Cycles And Church Programs

Posted by: admin on Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Often around churches we live by the adage “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” We become comfortable with programs and schedules so that even when they begin to produce declining results we are loathe to change them.

Years ago in a conversation about prayer and prayer meetings a veteran missionary made the comment that it is important to change the format and time of even prayer meetings to keep it fresh and new in the minds of believers.

product-life-cycle That thought came to mind again today while trying to commit “Product Life Cycle Stages” to memory for an exam. The Product Life Cycle or PLC is the course of a products sales and profits over its lifetime.

Here are the stages of a product life cycle and how they relate to church programs and functions:

  1. Product Development  - finding and developing the idea. It’s not bringing in results but is in the fun brainstorming stage.
  2. Introduction -  in the marketplace the sales are slow and expenses are high in order to create awareness. This parallels the “buy in” process when something new is started and people are not convinced that it is necessary.
  3. Growth – it’s now gotten over the initial speed bumps, people are excited and getting on board. This is a great time because you are seeing the results you had hoped for.
  4. Maturity – Growth slows because you have reached most of the potential participants. Results start to level off or even decline.
  5. Decline – while we don’t measure profits and can’t see all of the eternal results of what we do the visible metrics begin to show waning attendance or stagnation. The enthusiasm that was there in the beginning has diminished and often it is just the “faithful few” who continue to be involved.

Here is the challenge for a church leader. Do we continue to do what we are doing because it has worked in the past or, do we recognize the stage our program is at in the life cycle and either find a way to rejuvenate it or let it die a natural death and introduce a successor?

Topics: Marketing

 

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