Needs of Hearers

At a Worldwide Developers Conference Steve Jobs said:

One of the things I’ve always found is that you’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try to sell it. And I’ve made this mistake more than probably anybody else in this room, and I’ve got the scar tissue to prove it.

And as we have tried to come up with a strategy and a vision for Apple, it started with, “What incredible benefits can we give to the customer? Where can we take the customer?” Not starting with “Let’s sit down with the engineers and figure out what awesome technology we have, and then how are we going to market that?

Jobs recalled being excited about the first laser printer. He said, “I remember seeing the first printout come out of it. Just picking it up and looking at it and saying ‘We can sell this.’ All you have to do is hold it up and say ‘Do you want this?’ People went ‘Wow … Yes!’”

Possible Preaching Angle:

The church can learn from Steve Jobs. We don’t attract people with our technology, our gimmicks, our web presence. Like Jobs, we must “hold up” a community of Christ followers who love each other and God’s world. We can hold up hope. We can hold up an answer to guilt. We can hold up eternal life. Then people may see the thing they have been looking for, and join us.