Can the Christian Brand be Saved?
In my Twitter profile you can see that my first designation is “Believer” and I try to make that a part of my life everyday. I am a Christian [stated boldly], and I accept all the negativity and abuse that such a proclamation will engender. Too harsh? I don’t think so.
Maybe a hundred years ago, saying that someone was a “Christian Man” meant he was a good man, did the right thing, was humble, and mainly worked to support and loved his family. Now we call someone a Christian almost with a roll of the eyes, intending that he or she is false in some way, a hypocrite, and will only be nice to you if in some as-of-yet unknown way it will benefit them. Used to be that someone did a good deed and it was called a “Christian Act” but now that label would be, if not absurd, then irrelevant. How did things change so much? How did the Christian Brand lose its effectiveness and ability to inspire?
Ultimately I consider this an issue of marketing and branding. I like to look at Christianity, as a body like the Church, as a business since all organizations share the same traits in one way or another. The business is old but often reinventing itself, having an almost open source business model that can bring to life new divisions anywhere at anytime. The employees are not always the best managers, but they usually are evangelists in the truest sense and believe in what they say. But most importantly, what is the product? God? The Church itself?
This is where the Christian Church has gone askew. We ,The Church, have focused too much on selling Jesus and not enough on actual relationships with other people. Christianity’s ‘product’ is simply relationships, not God or Jesus, but honest and open connections with other humans.
We have sacrificed the beauty and benefit of those relationships for something infinitely cheaper, the need to make a spiritual buck. Yes, some churches are out there to make a real buck (the lure of $ being what it is), but most are concerned only with converting the unsaved and gaining that spiritual currency in their own bank. This is drifting away from the organizations value proposition, from the one thing that truly set it apart; individuals caring for individuals BECAUSE they are individuals created by God.
These relationships are what everyone is looking for from the Church, especially its members. People are naturally looking for an open and honest connection with everyone they interact with, and the Church is no exception. But as churches drift away from this core identity, the foundation that it was built upon, those churches will slowly fall apart. The churches that embrace their TRUE identity and communicate that to others through honest and quality relationships will thrive. I know my church is going through a similar revolution (called “servolution”) and if we, the believers, truly embrace this identity we will see a change in ourselves and others’ attitudes toward the Christian Brand.
