A Sussex marketing agency is urging churches to drop images of the Crucifixion in an effort to boost dwindling congregations.

Khameleon Advertising in Billingshurst says traditional approaches such as showing Jesus on the cross and Bible quotations are a turn-off to non-churchgoers.

Instead, churches should highlight their community life, the chance to have a good sing, hear a good sermon and have a heart-to-heart chat.

Khameleon was commissioned by the evangelical magazine Christianity+Renewal to come up with a way of reversing declining church attendances.

While congregations in Eastbourne and Worthing remain healthy, Sunday attendance is falling in Brighton and Hove and some churches are earmarked for closure.

Opinion is divided over Khameleon's ideas, which include the image of a lone goldfish in a bowl with the line "When did you last really need someone to talk to?" and a vicar with the words "When was the last time you saw some really good stand-up . . . for free?"

Guy Lupton, managing director of Khameleon Advertising, said: "If you look at the advertising churches do now, it's like preaching to the converted - trying to get people who are already members of the club to join."

Christianity+Renewal editor John Buckeridge said: "So many people are interested in spirituality. There are literally millions of non-churchgoers who want to know God and have a spiritual experience, who are unaware of what is on their doorstep. Advertising to them makes sense."

About 7.5 per cent of the UK population regularly attends church but in the past five decades the number has fallen.

The Reverend Simon Coupland, a vicar at the Broadwater Parish, Worthing, and author of Success: A Biblical Exploration, said: "There is a world of difference between changing the core values we stand for and changing the way we communicate with the world and present ourselves to society.

"I have no problem with an ad agency trying to change the way we communicate."

In Brighton, the Reverend Derek Moody, who presides over one of the few congregations in the city which is steadily growing, rejected the idea of dropping images of the Crucifix from his church, St Nicholas' in Dyke Road.

He said: "If you just press the social side of church you might as well go to a local pub. You have to have the essential bits of the faith as well."