Word: pleuthner
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Dates: during 1950-1950
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Every day letters stream into his office on Madison Avenue posing all kinds of church problems. In his spare time he is making radio, TV and church appearances to discuss religious affairs. On Sunday of this week, Episcopalian Pleuthner preached a sermon at All Saints' Episcopal Church in Harrison, N.Y. and a few days later was scheduled to appear on the Tex and Jinx show. Reason for Adman Pleuthner's new role: his current book, Building Up Your Congregation (Wilcox & Follett...
Dangerous Dignity. Like many another churchgoing businessman, Bill Pleuthner was surprised by the promotional ignorance of ministers and church boards, whose efforts to get religion across to the laymen often seemed to him pitifully unskilled. But instead of just grousing about it and staying away from church, Pleuthner wrote a book...
...undignified miracles-undignified acts of healing. Can you imagine the average church board being asked to approve such miracles as the turning of water into wine, or feeding the multitude on two fishes and five loaves of bread?" One of the chief weaknesses of church boards, according to Adman Pleuthner, is that they have too many bankers, lawyers, doctors and retired businessmen and too few "sales managers, advertising men, and active business executives on the way up the ladder of success." What's wrong with the bankers and lawyers? They "achieved success by having people come to them...
Turning his back on "dangerous dignity," Pleuthner urges churches to approach the spreading of the Gospel with the same combination of hardheadedness and imagination that B.B.D. & O. uses to spread the word about Swan Soap and Blackstone Cigars. Goals for regular, continued growth in membership should be set; the neighborhood should be carefully surveyed by questionnaire and canvasser to determine age and income groups, interests, reasons for coming to church and for staying away. Then ingenuity should be applied to give a fillip to the old, familiar routines...
Good Promotion. One of the most practical methods, suggests Pleuthner, is to glamorize the regular Sunday services between the great church festivals of Christmas and Easter by dedicating them to special groups and purposes. Examples: Founders' Day Sunday ("Why not honor those families that founded your church?"); Good Neighbor Sunday (special letters of invitation from the minister to all members of the neighborhood) ; Medical Sunday ("Reserve the front pews for families of doctors or nurses"); Flower Sunday ("when due tribute is paid to God for His gift of flowers to our world...