Warren’s warning: do not begin with target audience and build your church around who you can attract. That produces a market-shaped church — one that will reshape itself indefinitely to satisfy shifting consumer preferences. The congregation becomes an expression of the demographic rather than a community with a mission.
The sequence must be: (1) clarify your purposes — why does this church exist, what does it believe, what is it called to do? — and then (2) identify who you can best carry that mission to. Target flows from purpose, not the reverse.
The practical difference: a market-first church asks “who will come if we do X?” A purpose-first church asks “given what we are and believe, who is most ready to receive what we have?” The first question produces an infinitely malleable institution with no center. The second produces a focused mission with genuine identity.
For MNFC, this means the Unificationist theological identity — True Parents, the Blessing, Divine Principle’s account of restoration — is not a branding challenge to be softened for the market. It is the fixed point from which missional discernment begins. Who in the local Minnesota community is ready to encounter this message? That is the targeting question. The message itself is not negotiable.
The courage this requires is real: it means accepting that some people won’t come, and refusing to change the substance to win them. Strategy adapts. Substance doesn’t.