Traditionalist Christians sometimes claim that the Gospel is not something to be “sold” or “marketed.” They apparently think that sales and marketing skills should be confined to the commercial realm and not allowed to intrude on the holy.
Some traditiionalists even take the view that Christians’ job is merely to proclaim the Gospel, and God will take care of the rest. If the unchurched don’t accept the Gospel, that’s their problem.
I’m not so sure. The Great Commission is not process-oriented. It doesn’t say, just preach the Gospel and let God take care of the rest.
No — the Great Commission commands us to “go and make disciples of all nations, … teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (Matt. 28:19-20) That seems to put much of the responsibility for results squarely on us.
If we fail at making disciples, we can’t shift the blame to the secular culture, or to the unchurched themselves. We’re the ones who didn’t succeed in preaching the Gospel effectively.
(Cf. also the Parable of the Talents, which warns that we will be held accountable for how we put our gifts to use in God’s service — Matt. 25:14-30.)
Responsibility for results. It can be an unsettling concept.
But it’s nothing new to sales and marketing people. They may have some things to teach us:
- The goal of sales and marketing is to educate people and persuade them to make a particular decision. That’s basically the same goal as evangelism.
- Sales and marketing people recognize that in most situations, the prospect doesn’t have to buy. It’s much the same in evangelism, as proved by the number of people whose Sunday-morning rituals take place at Starbucks.
- Good sales people recognize that selling is sometimes a gradual process that has to proceed in stages. To use a fishing metaphor, you have to set the hook before you can reel ’em in.
Unfortunately, many traditionalists aren’t interested in a gradual evangelization process. They preach undiluted orthodoxy from the start. They insist that a prospective convert must accept everything in “the faith received from the apostles.”
These traditionalists don’t seem to particularly care that, to many of the unchurched, the so-called apostolic faith is, to be charitable, baffling — or, as some of my atheist friends would say, arrant nonsense. These traditionalists forget that they will never even have the chance to evangelize the unchurched if they’re unable to get them in the door.
- In the sales and marketing world, a prospective customer could walk away for what we might think of as trivial reasons. (Some people won’t buy a car if it doesn’t have enough cupholders.) We see similar phenomena in churches. The secular culture, especially the media, can be quick to point out the weaknesses in traditional Christian doctrine. The unchurched can be equally quick to seize on those weaknesses as an excuse for dismissing the rest of the message we try to bring them.
- A good sales-and-marketing team works on identifying and addressing issues that could make a prospective customer uncertain or uneasy. The same is true for the great evangelists.
- Good sales people, especially good “closers,” don’t simply say what they happen to feel like saying. They use language that the prospective customer can understand. I’ve heard it described as using receiver-oriented, instead of sender-oriented, communication. Good evangelists do much the same.
Evangelists shouldn’t scorn sales and marketing people. They could learn a lot from them.
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