2 of 8

There are indeed similarities. But evangelism and sales are not the same. And we market the church at our peril if we are blind to the critical and categorical difference between the Truth and a truth you can sell. In a marketing culture, the Truth becomes a product. People will encounter it with the same consumerist worldview with which they encounter every other product in the American marketplace.

Thus our dilemma: The product we are selling isn't like every other product—it isn't even a product at all. But if the gospel is not a product, how can we market it? And if we can't avoid marketing it, how can we keep from turning it into the product it isn't?

Of course, much of our difficulty is that most people know exactly what we have to offer, so we tend to be met with all the success of a door-to-door salesman who's been working the same street every day for 2,000 years.

Non-Christians are used to us; they know there is a group out there that wants them to "get saved." Thus, we disguise our evangelism, just as marketers disguise their work to pierce through the filters of ad-weary consumers.

And because it's hard to seem new and fresh with a steeple in the background, many models of one-on-one evangelism are churchless. This is why most of the methods we use bear every mark of a guy trying to sell his neighbor on the merits of a particular brand—be it motorcycle, lawnmower, or barbeque sauce—that changed his life.

It's not that the church isn't buried somewhere in this kind of evangelistic sales pitch. But Christian community is often relegated to a secondary, altogether optional consideration. It might be desirable, like joining the local Harley-Davidson Riders Club will enhance one's experience as a Harley owner, but it's certainly not necessary to seal the deal. For instance, the Four Spiritual Laws—a modern classic in evangelistic methods—says nothing about becoming a member of Christ's body when we "accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior."

The de-churched nature of our theology makes evangelism hard to do without seeming salesy, because churchless evangelism unavoidably promotes a consumerist soteriology. When it's just you and Jesus, you (the consumer) "invite him" (the product) "into your heart" (brand adoption) and "get saved" (consumer gratification). Certainly God has worked and continues to work through these formulae. His doing so testifies to his grace, however, not to the fidelity of such evangelistic formulations, which, in this culture, inadvertently make Jesus out to be a cosmic version of the consumer brands promoted in the thousands of advertisements each of us sees daily.

Such brands promise to deliver goods—self-esteem, sex appeal, confidence, coolness—that they have no intrinsic capacity to give. Their power is in consumers' collective willingness to imbue them with that kind of power. In other words, consumerism is impotent to deliver on its promise, and deep down, we know it. Consumerist marketing offers something that just isn't there.

next page... |  2 of 8

share this page

January 2009, Vol. 53, No. 1