What Has Changed Most in Christian Marketing Over the Last 25 Years?

Scott’s answer is direct. The center of gravity has moved from retail to lead generation. Twenty years ago, everything drove people to physical stores. Today, everything should drive people into a database you own.

He put it plainly: the number one thing he recommends to every organization, for-profit or nonprofit, is to harvest their own people into their own system. Get the email address. Get the phone number. Because when you have the email, you own the relationship. When you have a follower on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, or Rumble, the platform owns them, not you. And as the last decade taught the Christian world in painful detail, platforms can shadow ban, restrict, or shut down access to your audience without warning.

Your email list cannot be taken away. Your text list cannot be taken away. Everything else is rented land.

Why the Amazon Sale Is Not the Best Sale

Scott made a point that surprises a lot of Christian authors and product creators. If someone buys your book on Amazon, you got the sale, but you did not get the buyer. You have no email address. No phone number. No way to follow up, upsell, or invite them into your next launch.

He is not against Amazon. He is against optimizing only for the transaction when the relationship is the actual asset. For most Christian authors, ministries, and independent creators, he would rather capture the lead first and let them convert to a purchase on your terms than send them straight to a marketplace that owns the customer data.

When Should You Focus on Immediate Sales Instead?

Scott is not dogmatic about this. There are seasons where you need immediate conversions. If a ministry is selling tickets to a specific event, or if it is Christmas and end-of-year giving is on the line, you push conversion. You do not spend that window building a list.

But when there is no fire, the default should be list-building. And when the client wants both, do both. The mistake is running fast-conversion campaigns year-round when the business would actually be healthier with a database that compounds.

Why Do Christian Leaders Resist New Marketing Approaches?

Scott named the pattern he sees over and over. Leaders come into a marketing engagement with fixed goals and no budget for testing. They think they can walk in with a product or a cause, describe it accurately, and watch it convert on its own.

If it were that easy, no marketer would have a job. And, Scott added, as soon as anything starts working perfectly and everyone piles in, it stops working. Effectiveness erodes the moment a tactic becomes fashionable.

What leaders often miss is that hiring an agency helps with the learning curve. It does not eliminate it. Testing still has to happen. Messaging still has to be validated with real audiences. Nobody has a crystal ball.

What Is A/B Testing, Really?

Dr. Dave offered a reframe that Scott loved. A/B testing is what marketers say when they mean, “we don’t know.” Scott took it one step further: A/B testing is what marketers say when they mean, “let me find out.”

That is not a weakness. That is the discipline. The leaders who grow are the ones who stop pretending they know what will land and start running the tests that tell them the truth.

What Happened When Front Gate Ran 15 Tactics for Axe Social?

Scott walked through a live case study. His team is currently launching Axe Social, a new Christian social platform. They built a phase-one test across fifteen different tactics: paid social, direct email, PR, on-site opportunities, coverage in The Christian Post and Church Growth Magazine, and influencer partnerships.

Every channel got a response. But the number one performer, by a wide margin, was not any of the big legacy media outlets. It was influencer content from actor Kevin Sorbo. Scott admitted he would not have predicted that. His educated guess would have said one of the large media partners would win. The test said otherwise.

This is the whole point. You do not know until you test. And your best guess is often not the winner.

Why Is Influencer Marketing Outperforming Traditional Media?

Dr. Dave paused the conversation to explain what is really going on. Trust in legacy media has collapsed. When there were only three networks, everyone shared a common source. Now the media landscape is completely fragmented, and audiences have transferred their trust to specific voices they follow.

Some of those voices are macro influencers with millions of followers. Others are micro influencers with much smaller and more affordable audiences. Both work, and both work because the trust is built in. A commercial on legacy media does not carry that trust. A recommendation from a person the audience already believes does.

If you are a Christian brand and you are not building an influencer list, that is a gap. Not every influencer is a fit, and the outreach is a relationship, not a transaction. But when it lands, it lands hard.

What About Streaming TV? Is There a Real Opportunity There?

Scott is bullish on streaming television advertising, and he has put his money where his mouth is. Front Gate now represents Goodview Network, the Faith Channel, and the Christmas Channel.

The pitch is simple. Traditional Christian television buys on CBN or TBN are expensive enough to lock most ministries and startups out. Streaming networks are not. For as little as $1,500, an organization can get on Goodview Network. That is not the number you will see on legacy Christian television. It is closer to the price of a decent social campaign, and it comes with the full emotional weight of full-motion video with audio.

For independent authors, filmmakers, and entrepreneurs launching new products, this is a category that is still being discovered.

Why Is Isolation the Most Dangerous Thing for a Christian Leader?

The conversation shifted into leadership. Dr. Dave, who holds a doctorate in sport and performance psychology, laid out why isolation is such a threat. Isolation says there is only one way. That is a lie. God has infinite doors, infinite opportunities, and a room that is much larger than the fear-narrowed view most isolated leaders operate from.

Scott agreed and went further. Isolation and sin go hand in hand. It does not matter which side of the equation starts the process, they feed each other. His antidote is community. He belongs to a CBMC group where the primary focus is business but the conversations range far wider. Pastors need pastors. CEOs need other CEOs. Ministry leaders need people who can call them up short and speak into their blind spots.

A leader who is only surrounded by direct reports and paying clients is a leader who is one bad quarter away from a very lonely decision.

Is Church Marketing Different From Ministry Marketing?

Yes, and Scott and Dr. Dave both feel the tension. They love the church. But when it comes to church marketing specifically, the struggle is real. Pastors are stretched thin, budgets are unpredictable, and the language pastors default to often does not translate to the audience they are trying to reach.

What Is “Obligatory Religious Phraseology”?

Dr. Dave coined the term about a decade ago. Obligatory religious phraseology is the Christian language leaders default to when they are trying to sound spiritual without actually saying anything. Phrases like “transforming ministries with the spirit of excellence” or “we are helping people become fully devoted followers of Jesus.”

The problem is not that these phrases are wrong. The problem is that the people you are trying to reach do not understand them, and honestly, half the time the person using them does not fully understand them either.

The fix is to bring the messaging down to earth. Meet people where they actually live. A real church can talk about stress. Anxiety. Marriage that is hard. Kids who are struggling. Speaking human is not a compromise of the gospel. It is a prerequisite for anyone hearing it.

What Is WIFM and Why Does It Matter?

Scott’s core rule for messaging: every person in your audience is fully tuned into WIFM. What’s in it for me.

If your marketing leads with “we are hosting a carnival on August 25th,” nobody cares. Everyone has a hundred things competing for their attention on August 25th. If you want them to show up, you have to lead with what they will get out of it, not what you are putting on.

Dr. Dave connected it to Donald Miller’s StoryBrand framework. The customer, the donor, the first-time guest is the hero. Your organization is the guide. The moment an organization casts itself as the hero of its own story, it loses the audience it was trying to reach.

How Do You Set a Realistic Marketing Budget?

Scott’s approach when a client says they want to reach “everyone” is to hand the answer right back to them. “Okay, let’s hear the global budget.”

A ministry saying it wants to reach Christians and non-Christians is expressing a beautiful ministry goal. It has zero relevance to a marketing budget. Either the audience is more specific than that, or the budget is much larger than they think. Both cannot be true.

What Is the Best Definition of Marketing for a Christian Organization?

This is one of the most freeing ideas in the episode. Scott’s working definition of marketing is testimonial. God calls us to testify to what He is doing. If your organization is faithful, there are testimonials happening. Marketing is the discipline of documenting them and telling the story well.

For leaders who are uncomfortable with the language of sales and business, that reframe changes everything. You are not selling. You are testifying. And the byproduct of good testimony is that the right people find you.

Who Actually Defines Your Brand?

Scott and Dr. Dave landed on the same conviction. Your brand is not what you say it is. It is what your audience says it is. And most leaders do not want to hear that, because what the audience is saying is almost never a perfect match for what the founder intended.

The exercise Scott recommends is to line up ten testimonials from your most recent clients, donors, or first-time guests. Read them. If none of them mention the thing you thought you were doing well, you have a communication problem. That is not a failure. That is data.

Where Does Plan to Win Fit Into All of This?

The Plan to Win Podcast exists to help Christian leaders build the kind of vision that outlasts the fear, distraction, and busyness that hijack most organizations. Scott’s conversation is a perfect fit for the show because everything he teaches assumes the leader is willing to see clearly, hear the truth, and adjust. Vision is the prerequisite. Tactics come later.

If your ministry is stuck, your marketing has plateaued, or you are running fast without a database to show for it, this episode is a diagnostic exercise. Start with the questions Scott is asking. The answers get easier from there.