Marketing and John the Baptist

Our church evangelizes on college campuses and other venues through the medium of open air preaching. We carry banners with scriptures and Bible messages. We pass out gospel tracts. We engage in many separate one-on-one conversations while one person at a time loudly proclaims the Gospel. This attracts attention and helps draw people to listen.

Invariably, sincere and well intentioned (or not) professing Christians will approach us and say that we are doing it wrong. When you ask how they are doing it, they are very often ashamed to admit that they are not actually doing it at all. Nevertheless they don’t like the way we do it. They reason that the majority of people seem to be reacting negatively. Therefore we ought to try something different.

I tell them that from a marketing standpoint they are correct. But God is not a marketer.
I have been self-employed for over 20 years, and run a couple of small businesses.

 I rented booth space to promote products and services at home-shows for about 9 years.
I read case-studies, marketing books and studied promotional materials of various national brands.

Marketing is a fascinating art and science. And there is nothign intrinsically wrong with it. Often changing a single word or phrase, will mean success or failure in terms of sales. Companies will spend literally millions of dollars for a 30 second Super-Bowl ad., because they know it’s a good investment.

 It will sell the beer, or tires, or whatever it is they are selling. (Very often, they just slap a very immodest  woman into the ad, because sex sells.)

But the Bible says that God’s ways are higher than our ways. And his thoughts are  higher than our thoughts. It says that the foolishness of God is wiser than men. (Isaiah 55:8-9, 1 Corinthians 1:25-27)

God promised that the Messiah would come one day. He first mentioned it in Genesis chapter 3. Then for  thousands of years, he taught the Jewish people by Old Testament types and shadows that were pictures of Christ to help them recognize him when he came. There was the Passover Lamb, the Water from the Rock, the Manna from Heaven, the Brazen Serpent, the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, and others. 

Finally, it was time for the Messiah to arrive in the flesh. God chose a forerunner to unveil him to the world- to introduce his ministry to the people of Israel.

It was the most important job you could imagine. If WE were going to choose a forerunner, we would have probably picked the most religiously respected, most politically connected, best dressed, eloquent, popular, famous person we could find. We’d have probably picked that heretic Joel Osteen. But not God! Because God is not a marketer. God picked John the Baptist. A strange man whose food was locusts and wild honey. His clothes were camel’s hair and a leather girdle. He commanded professing converts to bear fruits worthy of repentance. When religious leaders came to his meetings, he roared at them, You generation of vipers, who warned YOU to flee the wrath to come? He ultimately confronted a powerful religious leader’s adultery and was thrown in prison and beheaded after only 6 months in ministry.

From a marketing standpoint, God was a total idiot. John the Baptist was a veritable caveman! Far from a calculating diplomat,  it’s easy to imagine him as a knuckle dragging ogre with a lunchbox made from a dinosaur skull.  Not mans pick, but God’s pick.

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe…. God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise… and base things… and things which are despised, hath God chosen….  From chapter one of he Apostle Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians.

Modern mega-churches use sophisticated Madison Avenue marketing techniques to fill the seats of their huge auditoriums. They even employ survey companies to poll their potential pew-fillers, and find out just what they want. They can sell their product by packaging it for mass-appeal. But the only attraction to Jesus is righteousness. People who realize they are hopelessly lost, come to him for forgiveness and new life. But as Pastor Bert Clendennen said, “Jesus doesn’t sell. He is grotesque to this generation.”

Jesus said, “Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you. For so did their fathers to the false prophets.” He said, “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” In light of these words, I am always very suspicious of something in the church world that is big and popular.

God never has a half-price sale on salvation. After 120 years of Noah preaching and building the ark, God slammed the door shut, and sadly drowned the whole world; though he Bible says he is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. ” (2Peter3:9) John the Baptist preached repentance to power, and literally lost his head because of it. The mega-church pastors would call him a failure. Jesus said of him, “Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist:…” Matt 11:11

Truly God’s ways are higher than our ways. God is not a marketer.

#2  1-27-2019

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