Multiple Movements: Learning from the Gap

by Tyler Zach

How can the Gap mentor our movements in the area of reaching the lost?

Campus Crusade for Christ a few years ago launched a new campaign called Multiple Movements Everywhere. The idea was to create multiple contextualized groups on campus whereby every student would have an opportunity to become a disciple of Jesus. Some of these groups include: Impact -> African-American students; Destino -> Latino students; Bridges -> International students; Epic -> Asian-American students, etc.

This was brilliant! However, this really wasn’t our idea. The Gap, as well as many other secular companies, have been doing this strategy for quite a while.

“Have you ever been in a mall and noticed that when you see an Old Navy, you usually also see a Banana Republic and a Gap? Do you think this is a coincidence? It isn’t. The Gap owns all three companies, and each has a different target audience. In general, Old Navy is the low-cost store that carries clothing ‘staples’ for young people. The Gap carries more “fashion-forward” casual attire at a premium price. Banana Republic is an upper-scale line that caters to the modern urban professional. Although they cater to younger people, they all cater to very different younger people.” (Church Marketing 101 pg. 149)

These Gap companies learned that that could be way more effective by creating three stores rather than just having one. Could your spiritual movement be more effective by creating multiple movements rather than just having one?

Here are some challenging questions for us to think about:

1) Is having a good movement keeping us from having great movements?

2) Even though our movement may be large, what percentage of the campus are we really reaching?

3) What type of students are involved in our movement? Are they radically diverse like our campus?


*content was gleaned and contextualized from Church Marketing 101