A friend recently sent me an email with questions asking us (Christians) what our product was and whether we were marketing it right. I answered that the product is “Relationship” and we don’t need and shouldn’t want any marketing at all.
It’s Sunday in Samoa today – and a full moon at that! This being a Christian country (founded upon God we are all told ad infinitum) Sunday is a required day of rest. Church is compulsory (or you can stay at home and read the bible and pray but not walk the streets if you want) according to most village rules. I choose to blog, and write because I can’t speak or understand Samoan and three hours of foreign language doesn’t make for very nice church for me. And anyway I got called out of the mainstream church years ago! I call myself denominationally free Christian. Some call that backslidden “Too bad for them!” my Samoan colleagues would say.
[Pic: Nice church alongside less-than-nice house. This is normal here in Samoa for three reasons: 1. The church is everything here, (God rulz OK?); 2. Nobody has much money to do renovations or repairs with; and 3. There is a cultural lackadaisicality along the lines of "Fai Fai Lemu" Take it easy mate!]
I’m not Samoa bashing today. I’ve had enough of that for this week! I’m not even Christian bashing today because I’m in a good mood. I’m taking a positive tack on this God thing and I’ll bring it all around to relate to Samoa at the end – trust me.
The Christian faith is presented a million differnt ways for a million different preachers, evangelists or exponents:
- God loves you
- You gotta go to church to save your soul
- Repent, for the end of the world is nigh!
- I’m the one that knows the real truth – join with me
- and on and on . . .
There’s always a grain of truth in any presentation of the Gospel but going to church, saving our soul and doing good things, even good Christian things is not the “product” of Christianity. The heart of our message is relationship. Restored relationship. God to man and man to God.
It’s the relationship that really mattered to God. The Lord was the one who spoke first after Adam and Eve had screwed up sinned in the Garden of Eden. He sought out relationship, for that is what He lost when they messed up. Forget about the criminals for a moment and what they lost. God missed out on the very reason He created in the first part – to ‘commune’ with His creation – to have relationship with – to walk in the evening with them and talk and share and just enjoy each others’ company.
So while there’s a whole bunch of lovely stuff like feelings and salvation and the intellectual joys of theology and so on, the real product we have to offer is relationship. By accepting Christ, we have a restored relationship with the Father – sweet!
So how do you “sell” this product? “How do you best market it?” my friend asked.
Obviously as a Christian we should model our conduct on Christ. Before I share my understanding of His marketing techniques, I want to share with you a story about a guy who works with us. I won’t name him but seeing as the other guy is in jail right now you can probably work out who this one is!
He said to me many times when I was dealing with losers. “Dennis I want to tell you about Samoa . . .” they all say that. They all love telling me about Samoa! “With us Samoan’s you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink”. He meant that there is simply no way that a Samoan will change his ways. If he’s a crook then he’ll always be a crook. “You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” would be the best English equivalent to what he was trying to say.
Over some weeks, we discussed this topic at length. He was proved right when our two criminals [middle of the page] were proved to be recidivist offenders. They couldn’t help themselves but steal and lie – even to save themselves from years in jail. In a Christian sense they were simply not interested in the product. Relationship meant nothing – pride pushed them to seek the “NOW” regardless of the costs in the longterm. A very common Samoan trait. Oops there we go Samoan bashing again. Rephrase . . it is common for Samoans (who are msotly all subsistence farmers) to worry and to think more about the now – today – rather than to plan for things in the future.
So when this guy who was teaching me was in turn himself challenged about change (in his case about smoking) he found himself facing a real challenge. No smoking in the car is the rule. We’ve got a long trip ahead of us. You can stay and smoke all you like or come with us and wait for your smoke. He really really wanted to come so it was an agonising decision. “You can’t make a horse drink, but you sure as hell eggs can make him thirsty!” I suggested to him as he pondered his dilemma.
And there in is the answer to the question of how to “sell” the Gospel. I did’t put billboards up telling my mate that he should not smoke – he knows it’s unhealthy and will kill him. I didn’t tell him the logic of why he shouldn’t smoke – he knows it all already. But what I did do was create a situation where he really wanted something more than a smoke. He wanted to be with me as we travelled and met people and did business and gave people hope. And he wanted this much more than a Pall Mall. As an aside he once spent a whole day without smoking and was amazed at himself. “You know” he said once “I haven’t had one smoke since we’ve been out and about and I’ve never even felt the need for it because we’ve been so busy!”
That’s the way Christ worked too. He did not hire a hall or build a temple/church building and market Himself. He didn’t even hire the best muso’s to perform for Him either. He simply walked the walk; talked the talk, and kept on doing it from town to town to city to city, day after day after week after week after month after month for three years until His enemies (the religious ones) finally cracked and they showed who they really were. He chose the hardest places and the weirdest bunch of people and He did miracles. The people wanted what He had to offer, and many sold what they had to follow Him.
Not all, for sure, but many did and the world has never been the same since.
So let’s recap. The product we as Christians are marketing is “a restored relationship” (with the Lord).
The marketing technique (if you didn’t get the gist of this before) is “to generate thirst”. To create a desire to have “a drink”.
In Samoa, I find myself doing a lot more of what the above teaching recommends than I did in a relatively wealthy country. The idea that a Church is not really the answer doesn’t wash well when you go to church and are committed to going to a church. The idea of selling your possessions and following Christ isn’t really that appealing when you are established and have possessions. The idea that there should not be any marketing doesn’t go down at all when it is necessary to pay the Pastor’s wages or fill the seats in the pews. Listening to the Lord and following a “whim” is a lot harder to do when you have “responsibilities” such as a church Board to be accountable to or if one has a congregation to Pastor, Teach or Love. Responsibilities restrict. You can’t get away from it.
But take this all away and one has an amazing freedom to do “go with the flow”, as I have been finding out in Samoa.
In the early history of the Christian church, one political leader took the Christian faith from a position of heresy to one of the State endorsed religion. While it helped spead Catholicism (the primary form of Christianity at the time) internationally, Constantinople’s endorsement of Christianity is seen in many quarters as the beginning of the end of the true Christian Church. (In fact I believe that the church lost it’s way centuries before when structure replaced relationship but that is a subject for another Sunday in Samoa!)
My business in Samoa takes me to as many villages’ high chiefs as I can find. I seek relationships with everyone and anyone without prejudice, fear, and many times without even forethought. I will hop in a car and drive on a journey, stopping and meeting people and seeing things I never knew even existed. I have made an art form of showing locals things and places in their country that they too never knew even existed. I have introduced relatives to each other from the far side of the island and surprised many about who I know and have met. From Filipo, in Savaii who has nine children and two of them twins – a man who works his butt off and has only a thatched roof hut for a home to the Prime Minister. I go where many do not.
My life is a life filled with “the excitement of exploration” and I virtually live in a car between a business, a home and dozens of various villages throughout both islands of Samoa, and yet there is a very strong sense of purpose in it all. First, befriending and helping villages in all corners of Samoa has the benefit of helping establish a support base for our longterm security here. A gazillion friends could be great support if I ever needed it for me and my family. But secondly, my example, hopefully a godly example, is being spread by word of mouth. I have people who share in the Samoan language about me and what we are doing. They spread the word that we are business people but able to help – in marketing, branding and in management.
If it is genuine Christian love, and it is unfettered by Samoa’s ultra strong cultural defensiveness, then I have the amazing privilege of sharing deeply with so many more than if I was in a Palagi country, at a Palagi church listening to a Palagi preacher raising funds for some unknown missionary in Zimbabwe, or with the Zulus.
Lord willing, I believe that in time, more will be able to see an example of genuine Christianity at work in what we do. Not the sham of religion. The real thing. We’ll all be giving it a good go anyway, day bay day!
To my friend who asked me the question on how to market Christianity, I ask this question . . .
How do the flowers market their pollen and honey?
The bees! The bees tell the bees!
And how did the Master market Christianity? Word of mouth, mostly one on one, and that I believe is the best and only way that Christianity should be marketed. The way that the Master showed us and taught us.
Enjoy the rest of your Sunday whereever you are!
Faa Sofua! [Goodbye muchly!]
PDF 
About victusinambitus