The wickedly good ad campaign for a Certain Religious TV Station (ahem) has just gotten a nice mention in the Gray Lady — along with a look at how churches are using marketing to get people in the pews:

The most visible current campaign is an assertive effort from the Collegiate Churches of New York, with a budget estimated at more than $1 million. The campaign is being described as the first from the church to use a variety of media, including television, print, posters and the Internet.

There is even an eye-catching tactic that Collegiate is calling reverse graffiti: The theme and logo of the campaign, “Positive and inclusive,” along with the church’s Web address, are power-washed into a dirty spot on a sidewalk, usually near a phone kiosk or bus shelter displaying a poster from the campaign.

The Rev. Robert Chase, the founding director of Intersections, a multicultural and multifaith initiative of Collegiate, acknowledged that the church is “using a variety of techniques from the advertising world” to help disseminate “a sacred message.”

After all, Mr. Chase said, Jesus “preached in parables, which are a story-telling technique.”

“I think advertising is simply a technique; it’s value neutral,” Mr. Chase said. “It can be used to exploit, or it can be used to promote positive messages.”

And what this campaign is selling “is certainly more of an enduring product than the latest potato chip,” he added.

The timing of the campaign makes sense, Mr. Chase said, because “there’s a higher interest in the church than at other times of the year, which filters into the culture.”

As for the timing with the financial crisis, that is a coincidence.

“This was in place before the economy crashed,” Mr. Chase said. “God works in strange ways, I guess.”

“People who are at a loss right now are looking for a sense of community, a place to have some of the larger questions about the meaning of life answered,” he added. “We want to be sure those folks have a place they can call home.”

The campaign’s theme is expressed in ads that carry headlines like “You’re invited. So are your questions,” “Faith is a verb,” “You don’t have to accept everything to be accepted” and “Diversity is what unites us.”

The ads promote the four churches of Collegiate — Fort Washington Collegiate Church, Marble Collegiate Church, Middle Collegiate Church and West End Collegiate Church — as “united in social justice, affirmation and spiritual growth” and invite people to “find your own faith in a welcoming, supportive community.”

The Web site was created by the New York office of an interactive agency, Gravitate Design Studio. The media planning and buying for the campaign are being handled by the Ingenuity Media Group. The campaign was created by Gotham, a New York agency that is part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, which created campaigns for the United Church of Christ.

The Collegiate campaign is meant to be “not preachy,” said Peter McGuinness, chairman and chief executive at Gotham, to underline the intended message that “whoever you are, you have a place in a church that’s nonjudgmental and inclusive and diverse in its views.”

Reinforcing the lighter side of the campaign, in addition to the reverse graffiti, are T-shirts, umbrellas and coffee mugs bearing the “Positive and inclusive” theme and logo, a plus sign inside a pair of brackets.

“We’re also doing pew pads,” Mr. McGuinness said, laughing.

That kind of humor is also being displayed in a campaign to rebrand a cable channel owned by Trans Video Communications that is affiliated with the Catholic Archdiocese of Brooklyn. The channel, formerly the Prayer Channel, is now known as Net, for New Evangelization Television.

The campaign, by Cesario Migliozzi in Los Angeles, features an unusual spokesman for religious television: the Devil.

He urges viewers to eschew “good TV” for “bad TV” like “reality shows with mindless plots” and “offensive” music video clips.

“We could have easily said, ‘Net is the network you’ve been praying for,’ but we need to get eyeballs,” said Michael Migliozzi, partner and creative director at Cesario Migliozzi. “The idea of having a little devil telling you not to do it would be a lot of fun.”

The campaign for Net, with a budget estimated at less than $200,000, includes TV and radio commercials, ads on buses and a diabolical Web site (stopgoodtv.com) in addition to the channel’s regular Web site (netny.net).