The Miami Herald today starts a 4 part series on minor league baseball’s amazing success over the past 15 years. The constant theme: minor league clubs set attendance records when they ignore baseball and sell an experience:

J.J. Gottsch, Ryan’s general manager in Corpus Christi, a first-year team in the Double A Texas League, has been on both sides of that fence. As a minor leaguer, he played rookie ball in a decrepit old ballpark in Butte, Mont., where baseball was the only draw — and the last-place team averaged 627 fans a game. Ten years later his team is drawing 10 times that many people to $28 million Whataburger Field — one of eight minor-league parks that opened this spring — with radio ads that don’t even mention baseball.

”What we have, and I think a lot of the different minor-league operators have, in terms of designing stadiums is entertainment inside the stadium,” he says. ‘Everything from the video boards to the basketball court to the kids’ playground to the Little League baseball field to the rock climbing to the swimming pool to the giveaways and promotions.”

Memo to churches: here’s what you’re competing against. You can’t beat these guys (or Nickelodean or XBox or DVDs or the mall or any of a million other consumer-driven experiences) at their own game. Try to out-consumer them and you will lose.

Here’s a novel church marketing concept:

It’s not about advertising and music style and decorations and mass mail and circus-style kids’ programs (though those things are fine in the right context). It’s about this:

BE THE CHURCH.

BE. THE. CHURCH.

Love the unlovable. Serve the unworthy. Speak truth with grace. Confess. Let the Holy Spirit live through you. Love. Live.

Don’t be a sideshow. Be the church.