Marketing and Christianity

One of the blogs which I follow is by marketer Seth Godin. He often gives excellent insights into modern day marketing. Why I like it is that it can often bring insights into the modern day church and how it markets itself. This I think can be illustrated by a recent post I read by Jason Cooker called 'Bonding vs Bridging :: Fear and retribution in fundamentalism'

Seth writes

Marketers... benefit when they work to make their customers dumber. The less they know about options, the easier they are to manipulate, the more helpless they are, the better they do.

 Cooker writes regarding fundamentalism at a conference he was at

There were other ways this parochialism was constantly reinforced:

• Jesus is coming back as a “dominant and domineering” savior who will wipe out his enemies
• If you do not have a strong man preaching this message to you every week then you are in danger of failing in the Christian life and should find a new church
• If you cease to believe this message then you demonstrate you never really knew God in the first place and were always bound for hell
• If you are a woman, showing too much of your body in public is a significant betrayal of your duty to represent Jesus
• “Right doctrine is the litmus test for your life”
• God’s wrath is not only satisfied by death, but by suffering too
• People who reject penal substitution and the divinity of Christ are among the most radical and perverse members of society. L. Ron Hubbard was quoted as an example, and immediately described as, “…a man who exhibited many of the markers of pedophilia.”
• You must be able to understand and agree with an abstract concept of God (the Trinity) and a specific technical role for Jesus (penal substitutionary atonement) to be saved from hell: “You can get [the question about who Jesus is] nearly right and still end up in hell.”

Seth in the same article writes about Marketing in a positive way ::

A few benefit when they make their customers smarter. The more the people they sell to know, the more informed, inquisitive, free-thinking and alert they are, the better they do.

The positive side of Christian Marketing as illustrated by Cooker ::

The gospel, on the other hand, is about Christ’s eradication of barriers. Now, the Resolved preachers would agree – but they would likely say the barrier Christ eradicates is the one between the individual sinner and God. I would say it includes that, but extends pervasively to all other barriers as well – those between men and women, between races and religions, between ideologies, between humanity and the earth, etc.

Its interesting, I was brought into faith through the whole idea of fear and guilt. In the end I nearly walked away from it all. Yet it was though redemption and love which draws me and still does to the Christian faith.

Christian Marketing

One of my favorite blogs 'Seth Godin's Blog' has written a post 'Think like me agree with me", while it is fundamentally a marketing blog there are numerous implications for Christians....

When you're trying to sell your idea, it's natural to assume that the people you're selling to think the way you do. If you can only show them the facts and stories that led you to believe what you believe, then of course they'll end up where you are... believing

The problem, of course, is that people don't always think like you.

Yep this is the same as Christians who do evangelism or mission. They don't realize that the world has moved on to looking at all things in a pluralistic manner including spirituality.

Seth goes on to give two work a rounds, the first is::

The challenge doesn't lie in getting them to know what you know. It won't help. The challenge lies in helping them see your idea through their lens, not yours. If you study the way religions and political movements spread, you can see that this is exactly how it works. Marketers of successful ideas rarely market the facts. Instead, they market stories that match the worldview of the people being marketed to.

This is a hard option because it involves incarnational mission. Really understanding who you are reaching, through their eyes.

And the second::

[There's an alternative, one that you might want to think hard about: perhaps you should only market your idea to people who already think the way you do. After all, you're not running for president, you don't need a majority. Screen people by their behavior (what they read, what they buy, how they act) and only tell your story to the people who will embrace it. That's a lot easier to do that than it's ever been before.]

I think this is where Christianity is currently stuck. Its easier to market your church and brand of Christianity to Christians. It is easier to sell to existing Christians than do the hard work converting new followers in a pluralistic society. What happens is sheep stealing. The majority of church growth comes from existing churches.

Sheep photo credits brew ha ha's

Leadership ::1 'Seth Godin'

I'm going to throw up a few of my thoughts on leadership in the next couple of weeks. One of the people who helped clarify a lot of the thoughts for me was Seth Godin and his book Tribes, Here is an excert from his blog::

Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead.

The scarcity makes leadership valuable. If everyone tries to lead all the time, not much happens. It’s discomfort that creates the leverage that makes leadership worthwhile.

In other words, if everyone could do it, they would, and it wouldn’t be worth much.

It’s uncomfortable to stand up in front of strangers.
It’s uncomfortable to propose an idea that might fail.
It’s uncomfortable to challenge the status quo.
It’s uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle.

When you identify the discomfort, you’ve found the place where a leader is needed.

If you’re not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it’s almost certain you’re not reaching your potential as a leader.

 I supose as my stint at Ranges I've experienced these; some mulitiple times