- If you missed last week’s discussions and are just tuning in, it may help to know that we kicked off last week with
- The Rule of 150 & The Mission of the Church
- Missional 101: Getting out of the House
- Friendship… (with Fingers Crossed Behind your Back)
in which I introduced the idea of a person’s individual “channel capacity,” or their ability to maintain a given number of relationships, be they friendships or acquaintances. From this, I extrapolated an observation that there perhaps is a maximum practical church size, beyond which there becomes a markedly increased tendency for the relationships within the group to supplant those which exist with non-members of the group. The resulting discussion then moved toward the idea of what sorts of practical ways we might go about kindling relationships outside the church… which idea was then elevated to a post of its own,
in which I repeated some of the ideas from the earlier conversation, and we began to extend them further with some excellent comments of people sharing their own experiences, observations, and ideas. A key concept that emerged was the conviction that relationships — friendships — had to be for their own sake, altruistic, and not shrouded in ulterior (perhaps I should have said ocluded… or occulted) motives. I then fleshed this concept out further with
in which I talked about pornography, advertising pitches, and colonialism… all of which I compared to the methods of evanglism which we’ve tried when we sidle up to unsuspecting people to whom we wish to extend friendship just long enough to haul them into church and convert them. And now that we’re caught up….
I’d like to put forward a few concepts from the world of marketing.
Firstly, in 1999, marketing guru Seth Godin wrote Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers, coining the new phrase, “permission marketing.” The basic idea is that you should get permission from people before you market to them. Remember the advertising that used to come in by fax? Or that comes in now via email? These are advertisments presented to you without your permission — and sometimes at your own expense.
Then there’s the Relationship marketing of the 1980s, which emphasises building longer term relationships with customers and “involves understanding the customer’s needs as they go through their life cycles.”
Alright, so let’s look at these in the context of evangelism, which I’ve already compared to an advertising pitch. And let’s begin by saying that the pitch has rarely been a good one… some of the worst examples are legendary, the stuff of parody, in fact — the list includes a tract on why the King James Bible is the perfect word of God, but oddly there’s no Spanish version of that particular title. The best examples would probably be The Four Spiritual Laws and Steps to Peace with God, but both of those are part of a methodology that (hopefully) intends to help provide some context. The bad examples are mostly in the execution, where they are intended to be distributed indescriminantly or anonymously in hopes that someone will come to faith with little or no outside help or influence. De-personalizing faith would, I suggest, be a clear first step (if not farther down the path) toward de-humanizing the evangelistic target. One of the milestones on that path would have to be the phrase, “soul winner.”
Speaking of de-personalization, I know of one local church a few years ago that used a computer to auto-dial telephone numbers in their exchange and play a recorded message inviting them to church on Sunday. I s*** you not… and I can’t believe they thought even for a fleeting moment that this was somehow a good idea that might work. I was in conversation with a group of people at the time, one or two of whom received the phone call — and you know, the general consensus was something other than, “Hey, I’d really appreciate an automated phone call from some caring local church who wanted to play a prerecorded message telling me when their services were and inviting me to come.” No, the general consensus was about what you’d expect. You know what kind of deep love you have for the activities of telemarketers… just combine that with televangelists and let your imagination run for a moment.
Fundamentally, these approaches are an affront to the idea of permission marketing. They’re an invasion of agenda into every exchange. Permission marketing has a much better response rate because the “target” has the power of choice, and are treated with respect. If they don’t want to hear the pitch, that’s fine… shake the dust from your feet and move on. Why force it upon them as if that’s somehow going to endear them to the message?
To be clear, I’m not advocating a “permission marketing” model for the spread of the gospel… I’m saying that too often we don’t even meet the minimum standard which the method sets, because we impose a one-sided agenda on the exchange. Note that even if you think it’s for their own good, an agenda the other person doesn’t want is still a one-sided agenda. Yours. God’s agenda hasn’t even entered the picture, and trust me — it’s bigger than yours, and not even remotely on the same timeline.
As for Relationship Marketing, the church actually does some of this… but not in the right way. One of the key elements there is a focus on customer retention, and this is something the church knows too much about. Often, they retain customers so well that they don’t even know people who aren’t customers… which is where the concept of Relational Marketing breaks down, because the Word-of-Mouth component self-destructs at that point. A key difference is that for relational marketing to work, the existing customers have to want to tell others about the product. You can’t beat your customers over the head asking them to engage in word-of-mouth without distorting the message they transmit. This is where the “soul-winning” jargon has failed… the message they transmit is not exactly an attractive one.
On the other hand, where it’s worked has been in the megachurch, where consumers are so happy with their experience that they tell their friends about it. They’re only too happy to promote the church, since they’re happy consumers. Problem though, if the church isn’t supposed to be the product. But if you promote one thing in order to get people to buy into another, then you’re guilty of the classic bait-and-switch, which is, to put it bluntly, fraud. I do wonder sometimes if some participants in the megachurch model are not selling — wittingly or not — a beer-commercial type of product. If I attend with all these shiny happy people, will I become shiny and happy too? Well, if you think that drinking a Bud Light is going to get you a blonde bombshell hanging off of each arm, yes. The thing is, we can all see the fallacy of beer=bombshell attraction, but when it comes to the church, we’re tempted to tell them “Jesus is the Answer” and you too can be a shiny happy person. We might even go so far as to tell them, blatantly, that they’ll become wealthy. Yeah, Jesus is the way to shiny and happy.
Oh, really?
Maybe I just know a different Jesus.
To put it another way, remembering last week’s post on colonialism, porn, and advertising, I included an image of a poster of Pamela Anderson. Click on the thumbnail for a larger version — go back and look, I’ll wait. Couldn’t find it? It’s the Blue Zone Girl. You didn’t even recognize her, did you? Before the fame, before the surgery, Pam looked to be shiny and happy with an enthusiastic look that seemed to come from the inside-out. In the attempt to sell that idea, there was surgery, ample makeup, attractive sexy clothing — or the removal thereof — and what you end up with is a waxy substitute for shiny happy enthusiasm, and the veneer looks pretty thin these days. Can you even recognize the original anymore? 
I like the old Pam better, can we have her back? Any decent straw poll will tell you we prefer Mary-Ann over Ginger and Bailey over Jennifer. We don’t like wax, plastic, or unreality. We like what’s genuine, and truth be told, we might even be getting better at spotting it.
So why do we need Plastic Jesus, anyway? Where do we get the idea that we need to pile stuff on top to make him or the gospel more attractive? How did we reach the conclusion that soft-selling the gospel without the personal involvement would really advance the Kingdom in the best way possible? Some of the gospel-promotion I’m thinking of smacks of disingenuous fronts, and makes me think of another marketing word: Astroturfing. I’m not suggesting that the celebrity testimonial is this… but after a while, don’t we start to become immune to it? Don’t we start to feel that that the stand-out testimony just doesn’t reflect our own situation? Don’t we start to think that our own testimony doesn’t measure up, and either needs embellishment or replacement, so that begin to feel we have to tell someone else’s story?
I’m going to wind it up here… I’m not ending this essay where I thought I would — I intended to talk about disingenuousness in conversion-motivated relationships and about the way in which we market the gospel. Hmmm, maybe I did get there… I just hadn’t thought about astroturfing and the plastification of the gospel in this context. Hmmm… “Astroturfing & the Plastification of Jesus” — there would be an interesting blog-post title.
So, am I onto something? Do we feel a gut-level unction to change the way we present our faith because of an urge to be more genuine? Is the way we portray the gospel accurate? Deep down, do we really prefer the new Pam? What say you?
though it’s hard to believe now, the United Church was the megachurch in the postwar [we were upbiquitous] … and I am old enough to remember its legacy. When I got started that group was still in power – and it was terrible. The only way to make the gospel palatable to the masses is to make it not the gospel anymore. We should have learned that with Constantine. We keep repeating the same error. It’s never been about market share… but about authenticity, about quality of relationship. How can dominant social power adopt a religious system that is intrinsically subversive – at our best we are your blog – a subversive influence. The problem with the megachurch/christian-empire model is Jesus. He keeps insisting on turning the tables over and interfering with the economic rights of the merchants.
btw. Jesus only said once, to one person ‘you must be born again’ = he also said, ‘sell all you have and give to the poor.’ and ‘it’s harder for a rich person to enter heaven. . .’ – how come we never see these quotes over the doors of the megachurches, or on their websites? Come to think of it, how come Mr. Chick never did a tract on that? [btw 2: has anyone ever suspected that Robert Crumb and Jack Chick might have been alteregos]
Jesus messes up our systems every damn time doesn’t he? How dare he ;)
yeah, plastic bobble head fit him in my pocket Jesus just doesn’t have much appeal to most people I know.
One of the ways to sell an inferior product is to market the crap out of it. Canadian beer commercials would be a prime example. (How can people actually drink that stuff when Guinness and some great micro brews are available, but I digress.)
We market the Gospel because we fundamentally don’t believe in its power. We don’t believe that the Holy Spirit is active and drawing people to Himself. Rather than truly befriending people, we feel we need to market our particular brand of churchianity to them to get them to “buy our product,” and, of course, our particular brand is THE BEST.
In your fair city a particular church holds “bridge events” to draw people in – fashion shows, Valentines banquets and “dinner theatre”. Just “get-em” in the doors anyway we can and perhaps we can convince them to stay. Or, more accurately, we can do the ole bait’n’switch.
We’d rather market our “church gospel” than live “The Gospel” where to some we might be the Fragrance of Life.
Victoria BC still has the “Pamela was born here” hangover — in many ways, could she be a metaphor for the attactional church?
One of my favourite banner ads on the side of a city bus was from KVOS in Seattle; they ran a picture of Quark from Deep Space Nine, Worf from Star Trek: TNG, and Pamela Lee Anderson in her Baywatch uniform, with the caption: “So lifelike, you’ll think they’re real.” Again, perhaps an apt metaphor for the attractional church.
There’s a reason why the word “authenticity” has become so popular in recent years, eh?
Oh, and btw, Bailey. Definitely Bailey. Maryann as well, for the same reason.
okay, but then who between Gilligan and the Skipper? Really liked Bill [presumably the younger]’s comment: “We market the Gospel because we fundamentally don’t believe in its power.” Lovely and succinct.
Now, Laverne or Shirley? Mary or Rhoda? So much to ponder… Chrissy or Janet…
…Donny or Marie? Sonny or Cher? Oh, wait…
Uh, Shirley, Mary, and, er, sorry… Chrissy. Having to choose between Charlie’s Angels though, that’s tough.
Perfect thought about the power. We fundamentally don’t believe that the product is enough on its own, so we embellish. I stopped short of making an observation about our view of the gospel based on the thesis of Seth Godin’s Purple Cow. Maybe I should have kept going!
“So lifelike you’ll think they are real” whew.. great thoughts here if somewhat depressing.. btw James K A Smith “Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism” has a great chapter that takes the discussion further.. ch4 power/knowledge/discipline where he uses foucault to address the possibility of alternative practices in a culture shaped by the market (literally ” a market worldview” according to at least one writer).
“Astroturfing & the Plastification of Jesus�???????????
Sorry to say but you’ve taken a concrete, practical discussion of missional living and degenerated it into buzzwords and diatribes. We could talk circles around this stuff for years and get nowhere.
So much for getting out of the house and actually meeting another human being…
Bob,
Getting out of the house is so overrated. I’m totally into the attractional model. I invite people to come over to my place. Killer sound system – great video – who could ask for anything more. (Oh, great Fin du monde beer, as well.) Buzzwords and diatribes are always welcome.
Yeah, well… I’m known for my unswerving drive for “Buzzword 2.0 Compliance.” ;^)
For my part, I’m the first one to line up and say I’m a far better theoretician than practician. I’m quite clear about the former, but only been accused of the latter with nothing haven been proven yet. It’s my intention to discuss both — I won’t always hit them in the same post, but our theory does affect our practice, and vice-versa.
As for “Astroturfing & the Plastification of Jesusâ€?, well, what can I say? Maybe I should have quit while I was ahead — my fingers slipped on the keyboard.
Bill — we can get Fin du Monde here, but nothing else from Unibroue. Too bad, I’d like to try some of their other products. Don’t they have one that those weird Quebequios drink warmed up?
Quebequios???
You Winterpeggers are too funny.
Warm beer is a sin.
I think of Fin du Monde as the champagne of Canadian beers.
Occasionally the missional conversation looses its sense of humour – nothing a few Fin du Monde couldn’t help.
Maybe I just need a beer–even though Mojito season is just around the corner and I think I saw the mint sprouting in the backyard…
Bob,
American beer would probably be a waste of your time.
But you should come join us for one of the beer’s Bro M is talking about. If you and I both leave now, we can probably be in Winnipeg by tomorrow night. ;-}
Bro,
Those beers look great – but some will definitely be offended. You are making me very thirsty.
And forgive me as I think I’ve hijacked this important post into a discussion of something slightly less important – but still important, mind you.
Bill,
Maybe that’s why I’ve been switching to wine and spirits. But for one of Bro’s brews, I’ll grab my passport and top off the tank. See you tomorrow!
I’m warming up the car right now (and its 57ºF here in T.O.). See you there. (At least in our dreams, Bob.)
This webversation certainly took an interesting turn.
Gilligan, definitely. Sweet and stupid over fat and crotchety anyday.
Can’t really comment on the others, but as a farm girl from Sask I always hope that the pure and natural ones win out in the end.
Beer sucks.
What does God expect of us? Main laws are to love him and others. Could argue that evangelism is a part of love. Yet it has always felt very not. Especially when I started to wonder what we were calling people to – the church as the giant pyramid scheme, in which we evangelize people so they can evangelize people so they can evangelize people…
Hmmm … while I am no stranger to conversations about beer (there are some wonderful American micro-brews that I am quite attached to ;-) ), I’ve got some notions about this post I’d love to hash around with whomever.
The first is this … Bro. M. I’m not sure your dichotomies as far as girl choices hold up. They are (after all) television characters and the parts are written specifically to make one endearing and the other not-so-much. I think though, those roles get into our heads and we find ourselves playing them out (which is the reverse process of what I hear you talking about … but I could be wrong). I think, to be succinct, that media plays a far greater role in how and what we think than we realize and you’ve definitely tapped into that here. I think the question might better be, who do we find ourselves drawn to in our circles of friends, peer groups, etc.? How would we characterize those people? And, then, are we helping and/or following them because of their character or because they make us feel good about ourselves? How many of us choose to befriend the Ginger-types because we need them and they need us just as much as MaryAnn? Or do we all flock to the MaryAnn-types because they’re not wax?
Sorry, I realize that all of that was heading in a direction that you were not going with those dichotomies. But it was something the whole thing made me think about.
The second thing that this series has gotten me thinking about … or rather thinking more deeply about … is how do we present the Gospel without being manipulative? Don’t read that question at the surface because I’ve been engaged in relational church for quite sometime. My question is deeper … as in, is it ever not manipulative to present someone with the Gospel followed by those questions we feel so driven to ask … like “if you died now, what would you tell God is good reason to let you into heaven?” The questions and conversations where we get engaged on a level that we come very close to demanding a response from our friend. Or … how do we rein in our enthusiasm for cultural Christianity and keep from that part of the conversation? Or … should we? In short, I think this feels very much like our friendships in this paradigm have the possibility of ending up looking like a Master-Grasshopper relationship (think John Carradine’s Kung Fu here) where we think we have many answers but we’re not giving them up.
This seems to call for embracing a real tension between two extremes of manipulative behavior. Very, very difficult indeed …
Brother Maynard,
Great thoughts on cheapened friendship or the plastification of Jesus.
Sonja,
My own persuasion is rather on the reformed wing, so my criticism of Jonathan Edwards doesn’t come easily or naturally… but to look at it another way, it was also a product of his culture, into which context it actually fit. And yes, the Holy Spirit would have been integrally involved – as the story goes, Edwards was not actually a compelling speaker, and yet people who heard the sermon gripped the pews until their knuckles turned white for fear the floor would open beneath them and they would drop into the pit of Hell. That’s not a normal response and I wouldn’t buy a mass hysteria arguement, so it can only be the Holy Spirit. On that basis, I recant what I said about him scaring the Hell out of people.
I do think you’re onto something with the challenge to defining numerical growth… what if God doesn’t define “growth” numerically at all? Perhaps he would measure the expanse of the Kingdom in a way that 4 “halfway-sanctified” believers are better than 10 barely-committed ones? I don’t know, but it seems inappropriate to impose our values for size or anything else upon God. Yes, we probably look to him for the wrong things as much as we ascribe to him the wrong things.
And your daughter should forget the NHL and press toward the Olympic women’s hockey team. Not so much because she’s a girl as because they play better hockey. Trust me, I’m Canadian, it’s in my DNA to know! ;^)