Brentwood Baptist Church offers its worshippers an NBA regulation-size basketball court, a volleyball court, a full locker room with showers and a McDonalds restaurant.

The decline of western religion or the shrewd use of modern marketing? Read on to find out.

The trend is not without its detractors. William Schweiker, professor of theological ethics at the University of Chicago sees no place for a coffee shop in a church. "On a sociological level I’m not surprised that this has happened, because Americans see religion no different than other consumptions. They are of the mindset that if they are going to consume religion, consume coffee with it."

Theological criticism aside, what these places of worship are engaging in is simply marketing 101. Instead of blindly focusing on their products (Salvation, God, the Bible) they focus on their customers. To do so, they employ three core tenets of marketing:

1. Customers, not you, define your value.
   
   "What business thinks it produces is not of first importance," said Peter Drucker, the father of management theory. "What the customer thinks he is buying, what he considers value, is decisive. And what the customer buys and considers value is never a product. It is always utility, that is, what a product does for him." Asked whether she doesn't find it odd to have a café in church, one member of Indiana's Family Christian Center answered: "Why the fuss? I think it's a great idea. When I come in on Sundays, it gives me a chance to sit down before service, have a coffee and brownie, and meet new people. Isn't that what church should be about?"
   
   
2. If your customers change, so should you.
   
   Creating value for customers isn't that difficult. Sustaining the process of value creation is. The risk is that, after an initial success, an organization will begin defining itself - what it stands for - through the lens of the product or service it offers. But the more that happens, the deeper the chasm it will open between itself and its customers. In a growing population, more people have pets to keep them company. That means that if places of worship want to attract these people, they must adapt to their changing needs, even if it means holding funerals and bar-mitzvahs for their pets.
   
   
3. Your competition isn't another product. It's another experience.
   
   With more than 40% of young Jews marrying outside the religion, the Jewish synagogue is running the risk of becoming less and less relevant to more and more people. Armed with this realization, advertising magnates Charles and Maurice Saatchi set out to create an experience that will position their synagogue apart from the established synagogues, which they dubbed as "being too formal and having boring services". The Saatchi's gave $400,000 to Rabbi Pini Dunner, a former radio station manager, to create a hip temple. Today, Rabbi Dunner operates London's "Coolest Shul" ('Shul' is another word for Synagogue), where weekly activities include speed-dating, Tequila and Megillah parties and relationship seminars which promise to educate participants on the art of flirting.

Why are places of worship offering all these activities when their members can get them elsewhere? Precisely BECAUSE they can, and will get them elsewhere UNLESS their synagogue, church, mosque or other place of worship offers them a better option.

Whether we feel comfortable about how certain places of worship are marketing God is beside the point. What matters is that these organizations have realized that they need to adapt in order to survive. If they can adapt, is there any reason your company couldn't? As General Eric Shinseki, former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army once said: "If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less."