Priming from the pulpit: Extending regulatory focus theory to church services

• Author: Clark D. Johnson,Brittney C. Bauer,Yunmei Kuang,Christine A. Ascencio
• Date: 01 March 2019
• Published date: 01 March 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nml.21335

RESEARCH NOTE

Priming from the pulpit: Extending regulatory focus

theory to church services

Clark D. Johnson | Brittney C. Bauer | Christine A. Ascencio | Yunmei Kuang

Richard A. Chaifetz School of Business, Saint

Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri

Correspondence

Clark Johnson, Richard A. Chaifetz School of

Business, Saint Louis University, 3674 Lindell

Blvd, St. Louis, MO 63108.

Email: clark.johnson@slu.edu

The purpose of this research note is to extend a powerful

cognitive psychology theory—regulatory focus theory—

to a specific nonprofit organization: churches. We apply

this theory to the design of church services to model how

church leaders can structure services to enhance congre-

gant experience and generate positive behavioral out-

comes. We present an experiment utilizing 126 adult

Americans as initial evidence for our framework. The

results indicate that using appropriate regulatory focus

priming strategies can increase congregant donations.

KEYWORDS

church leaders, church services, donations,

persuasiveness, regulatory focus theory

1|INTRODUCTION

“The most unpopular subject a minister can choose is the subject of “Hell.”However, I

feel that the Spirit of God would have me to deal with this subject and I cannot avoid

speaking frankly about it.”Billy Graham (as cited in Johnston, 2003, p. 298)

Most church leaders will acknowledge that some theological topics are more likely than others to

resonate with congregations. One unpopular topic is the existence and nature of hell. However, those

same leaders will also acknowledge that teaching about hell is a necessary and important duty. This

leaves many church leaders in a bind: There is a need to teach about hell and avoiding other undesir-

able states, but they also need to teach in a way that optimizes their congregation's reception of the

message. In other words, how can church leaders frame their message in a way so that their congrega-

tion does not disengage to avoid thinking about a negative topic, or worse, become disillusioned?

The purpose of this research note is to apply a powerful cognitive psychology theory—regulatory

focus theory (RFT; Higgins, 1997)—to examine strategies of service design that can result in stronger

persuasive effects. To our knowledge, this is the first study to apply RFT to model the strategic

design of church services in this way. It is important to note that this paper does not seek to advocate

Received: 24 July 2017 Revised: 23 July 2018 Accepted: 28 July 2018

DOI: 10.1002/nml.21335

Nonprofit Management and Leadership. 2019;29:437–447. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/nml © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 437