Fencing The Sheep

A pastor from North Carolina revealed something interesting about a large mega church recently. Dr Michael Kelly of Central Triad Church said in a recent sermon about stumbling upon something Elevation church was doing to take people from other churches. He said, “We have a vision to grow…and there are some churches who grow and you wonder how…you know a few years ago, I was looking for advertising plans…and I invited someone who worked at ABC to come to our church to give me some ideas of what we could do for advertising…and so she sits in my office and we’re talking and she says, ‘well, you could always geofence.’ I went, ‘what is a geofence?’ And so she begins to explain to me how they would do it. You pick an area and everybody with a smartphone that walks in that area starts getting notified of your ads.”

Dr Kelly then begins to explain what geofencing is to the congregation as he is telling this story. Geofencing is a way to use your smartphone's GPS to send your ads once you are in a certain area. According to Techtarget, geofencing is a type of location-based marketing and advertising that uses GPS, RFID, Wi-Fi, or cellular data to “define a virtual geographical boundary and trigger a targeted marketing action when a device enters or exits that boundary.” So if Walmart wanted to steal customers from Target, Walmart would put a digital fence around a Target store nearby so that when a phone crosses the “fence” Walmart put up and is near the Target, that phone would start getting ads from Walmart. This would be in hopes of you changing your mind to go to Walmart instead by seeing those ads. And this is what this advertising executive is offering as an option to advertise for Dr Kelly’s church.

He continues, “And I said, ‘well that’s interesting, how would a church use that?’
 ‘Oh its simple!’ 
‘Well how is that?’
‘Well I was in charge of all the geofencing for a much larger ministry.’” Pastor Kelly wouldn’t name the church during his sermon. Protestia.com later contacted Dr Kelly and confirmed that the church was Elevation Church.  Elevation Church is a 17,000-member multisite campus with 20 locations. Their lead pastor is  Steven Furtick. For a little more context Furtick is a false teacher. While he professes to be Christian, his sermons are anything but biblical. I would never recommend anyone to ever listen, follow or read anything from him. To give a quick example, he once taught in a sermon that Jesus broke God’s law because He loves us so much. This type of thing is exactly what you would expect from someone who isn’t worried about saving souls, but putting people in the pews.

Back to the exchange with the advertising exec:
‘See, I was in charge of it, and we would geofence all the churches.’
Dr Kelly  said, ‘I’m sorry, what?’
She said, ‘yeah, when we launch a new campus somewhere, we would go in and geofence all the church locations in that city so whoever would go to church would find out about this new church.’
And I said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not quite getting what you’re saying.’
She said, ‘it’s a built-in tithing base.’
So I said, ‘help me understand something. You’re telling me that you are literally advertising in other people’s churches so you can take their members and not reach the lost?’

Dr Kelly said he told the ad exec he thought that this was unbiblical and unethical and not right and would never do that. “So when I finished talking with her I called up the local campus pastor…” and he explains that he lays it all out to the local pastor from Elevation about what he was told by this advertising executive. The pastor said it was not true and that he didn’t believe it. So Dr Kelly asked him to call the head office of Elevation and ask them:
“‘OK. Why don’t you ask your people?’ He sent a text off. At the table, the message comes back. He starts reading it out loud. He didn’t read it before speaking to me.

Reading it out loud…he reads, ‘we don’t geofence by the name of the church, just by the church itself.’ Meaning, they weren’t targeting Dr Kelly’s church directly but a group of churches in their area, including Dr Kelly’s. So he did confirm what he was told: that Elevation church geofences churches around their campuses. Or to phrase it more accurately: electronic sheep stealing.

Dr Kelly then said to the local campus pastor, “‘I would rather you bring signs and come stand in the parking lot and let everybody know you’re here, than to do what you’re doing right now. It’s unethical and it’s wrong.’ And then I said, ‘you go ahead and call the powers that be and get Central Triad Church out of your list.”  I completely agree with him. The whole entire practice is unethical, unbiblical and shows the true colors of Elevation church. They aren’t worried about people’s spiritual condition, but about getting the numbers and the money to be “successful”.

Yet, there is something else here that we don’t want to overlook. First is the fact that this strategy works on Christian’s (or else why would they be doing it) speaks to the shallow faith the American church has. Instead of choosing a church based on biblical standards set out for us by God, people are instead being drawn in by ads and the entertainment atmosphere of Elevation church. We can see here that people are more addicted and inspired by their electronics than the word of God. If people were going to the church for the right reasons, deeply rooted in the word of God and not so enamored with the flash on stage, this would never work. Elevation would have tried it and would not have wasted their money. But it does work and to the shame of those who call themselves Christians.

The other angle of this that may not be so obvious is just how devious our enemy is. Think about this: Elevation is a false church. They do not teach the truth of God’s word. The devil knows this because he knows the word better than we do! (see Matthew 4:5-6, 8:28-30, James 2:19) So sit back and realize the level of temptation this is to lure people from going to Biblical Churches to now going to a false church!  We always will say how sneaky and crafty Satan is, but now see an example of just how deceptive! We have a church here that looks, acts, sounds and appears to be a true christian church. Then we have the use of ads on our phones to lure people away to a church where they will be lead astray! Talk about electronic spiritual warfare! I often wonder if we give the devil enough credit for just how advanced his plans are. For just how well he knows us and our nature and what will lure us away from what the truth is.

Now I am not saying we need to throw our phones away or that the devil is in advertising! Far from it. But what I am cautioning on is to be all the more rooted in God's word. To be all the more in tune with your heavenly father. To be all the more vigilant and aware that we are in a spiritual war. To not be falling asleep at the helm. If these people were more rooted in their faith, it wouldn't have mattered what advertisement came on their phone. Let us realize the depths and lengths that the enemy will go to misguide us. If he is doing this to biblical churches, what could he be doing to us personally? We need to all the more rely on Him and the strength of His might (Ephesians 6:10).  Let us not be prideful or arrogant to think we are above his schemes. Instead let us be meek and humbly submit to the Lord and the instruction of His word.