Dogs and Sheep

A friend of mine once asked me if carrots grew on trees. Which reminds me; some time back I was driving through a local town in Hawaii and came across a herd of sheep. A friend of mine who was riding with me wondered why some one would keep all those dogs in their backyard. But that was not far from a good friend of mine that has just returned from a mission trip to Rwanda who was asked if he saw gorillas in town. I mean, come on! Gorillas in town!!, are you kidding me! Now wait when you hear this: “Do you eat cooked food in Africa?” Okay, that really got me. I mean, fire was discovered in Tanzania by a caveman a few years ago in African history. Are you wondering whether cavemen eat cooked food? The answer is yes. Of course we are so many years ahead of caveman living. Little wonder we eat cooked food. But seriously, what’s up with our education system? I mean, why are our kids getting slower and slower about world events and simple visual recognitions? Did I say kids? I meant, why, including more than kids, are we so… uninformed?

A few days ago I was talking to a western investor (and by WEST I mean from Jupiter) about real estate investment in Kampala Uganda; Talk about 50% ARR (Annual Rate of Return). The gentleman looked me in the eyes with an absent-minded-I-know-the-answer-kind of look and said “what about Joseph Kony? Is it safe to invest in a city where Kony’s soldiers vandalize houses everyday?” I know you were going to laugh at this. If you didn’t laugh, please stop reading this because what follows is probably going to annoy you even more.

I called this note YELLOW AFRICA because of my affinity to bananas. My wife knows I can have bananas for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Did you just say MONKEY? Please!! Anyways, yes, bananas. According to my banana preservation technique, there is a time in the life of a banana when it is the sweetest. It’s normally between the stickiness and the stinkness of a banana. Imagine if a country like Rwanda was a banana. Maybe we could call the time period between 1991 and 1994 “sticky Rwanda”. But ten comes 2005 and 2006. Close your eyes before you read this because your Jupiter-mind will not believe it: Percentage change of Rwanda’s GDP growth rate was a stinking 477.78%. In the same year, United States’ percentage change in GDP growth was a sarcastic -27.27% (we are talking minus in terms of negative growth. It’s like walking to heaven backwards).
Now let’s talk future. In 2007, United States’ GDP growth was, you got it, Zero. What about predictions for 2008? Yeah, that’s right: minus (negative) thirty one point two five percent (31.25%) “ungrowth”.

Now going back to our sticky Rwanda, 2007 figures show that Rwanda’s GDP outgrew one hundred and twenty two (164) countries of the world at a whopping 11.54% growth rate. Now that’s what I call a really-yellow-banana ready to go. And we have so many of them in Africa. Lots and lots of them. But our Jupiter minds have not been programmed to see them. We miss them. Everyday. Until we hit rock bottom. Then we wake up to India, and China, and Taiwan, and Singapore… and it’s too late to jump onto the boat. Fasten your seat belts. And if you would excuse me, we are off to we-told-you-we-were-really-ripe-for-investment land”.

Tell Me Today About Tomorrow

One of the most widely read Christian books is “Purpose Driven Life” by Rick Warren. Why is this book so popular? Is it because people really want to know what plan God has for their lives? May be. May be not. Knowing the future has been the fascination of many generations. In Africa we have fortune tellers who use all kinds of tricks to prove that they can foretell your future. Horoscopes are popular in the west. There is a deep desire in every man or woman, for gender sensitivity, to want to know the future. Why do we want so much to know the future? I believe that human beings don’t like surprises. Not knowing what the future holds leaves us to a game of chance and sheer trust that the future will be what we expect it to be. To take the surprise out of life we spend hours and hours consulting books, fortune tellers, horoscopes, give it a name. Thousands of books have been written on how to determine your career. Psychologists boast knowledge of your future by analyzing your talents and passions.

What surprises me about these future speculators is not so much that they exist, but that very few of the predictions they make actually happen. You see, to me, something that is not a hundred percent accurate all the time cannot be truth. Truth has to be a hundred percent true at all times. There is no such a thing as partial truth, lopsided truth, some-how-true truth, or not-yet truth. Truth is true at all times. And that is why I believe that only God knows what our future holds. He is always true to himself. David, talking of God, says, “O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and you are intimately acquainted with all my ways.” David understands the futility of trying to figure out his future. If God has known him from before time, then the same God knows where his life is leading. Only God can know our future. He has always known our future. The psalmist says, “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, you are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there your hand will lead me and your right hand will lay hold of me.” God knows our life map. He has the power to change your course if he wanted to. It doesn’t really matter what the psychologists say. A friend of mine used to stutter a lot until God called him to become a preacher. He could not believe it. His first sermon in the pulpit was a nightmare. And so was his second, and third, and forth, until the church he was called to pastor started to grow. The church grew from one hundred people to a thousand in less than two years. He still stutters and the church is still growing. You see, the psalmist understands this when he says, “For You formed my inward parts; you wove me in my mother's womb. I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are your works, and my soul knows it very well.”

So why worry about the future if someone is taking good care of it? Shouldn’t we all be minding our present business and rejoicing in the fact that someone has our best interest in mind? I think we should.

How Lessons Learned from Culturally Relevant Marketing Can Transform Evangelism Patterns

Here in the city of Portland, one of the largest American crusade evangelists is organizing a mega citywide outreach to win souls for Christ. His present campaign beats the marketing strategies of fortune 500 companies. He has people. He has money. He has volunteers. Everything is free, it is non-profit money. Everything is donated so star evangelist can afford to put on such an expensive show with no responsibilities to shareholders or venture capitalists. This is a safe business for church people. But just how much result can we reap from citywide evangelistic gang-bouts today? Is the harvest still the same as the early 80’s and 90’s when Billy Graham last wooed masses with his soft-spoken accentuation and a hard-pressed call for repentance?

One of the leading US church consultants was asked how he could describe Christians in terms of evangelism today. “I am frustrated by church people letting Billy Graham do the job for them,” he said. I can’t agree more. Billy Graham is an old man who is skating straight to heaven with angels waiting for him at heaven’s door gates. When are we going to stop waiting for Billy to come to our town and do our evangelism? When are we going to stop thinking of evangelism as multitudes gathered at crowded stadiums? Somewhere along the path, Christians need to realize that evangelism is more than a big bang task to accomplish. Somehow the light must come on for us to see that evangelism is a way of living our Christian life.

Today’s advertising patterns and marketing culture trends call for even a more urgent change in the way we do evangelism. The big crusade billboards do not work anymore- ask any average business owner in town. Television and radio commercials are losing grasp of the ever changing culture. Which crutch are we going to stand on?

I believe there is so much that churches can learn from ordinary business marketing trends to engage today’s culture with the message of Christ. It is not new information that consumers today are rejecting traditional forms of marketing. The artificial and highly scripted marketing campaign is not popular any more. Multinational corporations are becoming “the enemy of the state” so to say. The public has developed high distrust for the outrageous promises delivered by corporations on TV and other media. Consumers are sick and tired of advertising spin-offs with tactical story telling that settles for no more than empty promises. This kind of disgust is affecting not only marketable goods and services but the message of the church as well. Anything that encroaches on the public private viewing freedoms is received with contempt. This includes television evangelists and large Christian meetings infomercials

The public is turning to a new form of buying called “peer-advised buying.” Peer-based sources of information that help the public to exchange observations about experiences in the marketplace are becoming popular. The marketing manager at “3-Foot Corporation” (fictitious name) is no longer the message controller. The new marketing manager is the consumer. The consumer is found everywhere from a high school football team to a local pub. The marketing mass has become highly fragmented. Numerous sets of subcultures are screaming to be reached in their own way and on their own terms. In brief, the consumer determines how you do advertising. In other words, in the new marketing world, culture determines who buys and sells. This kind of consumer advised buying is setting trends for all kinds of public groups including church membership and product purchases.

Savvy corporations today are flocking to culturally relevant marketing. This form of marketing however does not produce quick-fix results like the mass media has always done. Its strength lies in the power to embed the products in the minds of the public, thus producing greater returns in the long run. People flock to what promotes their culture. The new culture is what people watch, read, and share. Only those companies that maximize on this knowledge will be able to reach the post mass-marketing consumer. This shift has so many implications on the way we do evangelism today. Evangelism will have to be culturally relevant to break through the clatter of subcultures that are sheltering themselves from the outside world. You find them everywhere; from myspace and facebook groups to Google Orkut communities. Rumor has it that these subcultures are creating all sorts of goods and services including the time-old economic systems such as barter trade.

One of the ways that corporations are making use of culturally relevant marketing is through product placement. Product placement advertisements are promotional ads placed by marketers using real commercial products and services in the media. Product placement appears in plays, film, television series, music videos, video games, books etc. This and many other culturally relevant marketing techniques are going to set the trend for advertising in a post mass-marketing generation. This is something that churches can borrow from. What about incorporating the message of the gospel in a movie and pay placement fees? Movies have the power to reach more sheltered houses than any international evangelist will ever step into.

So here you have it. If you are so passionate about reaching our generation for Christ, it is high time you started breathing in their space and reach them on their own terms. Or you can stick to the same old-time prophetic finger-pointing and miss the whole deal of God’s ways. Jesus was always relevant to his culture. He spoke farming to farmers, fishing to fishermen, and laws to lawmakers, Pharisees and Sadducees.

Are you ready to drop your guard and REACH?

Amon Munyaneza

Are You Available?

One of the biggest catastrophes of our time is that no body is available.

Fathers are not available for their sons. They are busy trading stocks on Wall Street from their high ceiling offices downtown. Mothers are not available for their daughters. They are busy working 12 hour jobs and shopping for the next fashion trend. Husbands are not available for their wives. Wives are not available for their husbands. Dog owners are not available for their dogs. Dogs are left in the hands of dog sitters. The owners can’t walk their dogs anymore. They hire dog walkers. They are not available for their dogs. Your local phone company is not available for you. They have left you in the hands of some outsourced customer service representative who you can’t figure out a word that she says. People are simply not available

I am really not so bothered who is and who is not available for me. What bothers me is our audacity to not be available for God. You would think that people would fear to log off and sign out of God’s care and love. But this is not true. People are not available for God either. Today’s God has become a God of convenience. He is an accessory to our daily costume of restless living. We pick him up when we need him. We put him down when we don’t need him. God’s will is that you be available when he needs you. I know we all want to be important. We all want to be needed. And it is okay to want to be needed because that is why God created you. God made you so you can be needed. God did not create anyone that he did not want to be needed. Everything God created was needed and is needed. But to be usable you must be available. If you are not available you are not usable.

Today my challenge to you is that instead of spending sleepless nights wondering what God wants you to do with your life, just spend more time with him letting him know you are available. You will be shocked how much he can do with you when you become available. Those coincidences which are actually not so coincidental will start happening more often. The earth will start aligning itself to meet your needs. You will release the power of the divine to work on your side. Things you didn’t know existed will start becoming alive to you. I am speaking to you from experience. Ideas and dreams are everywhere. Think of people who have made a fortune. Garbage collecting companies have made millions disposing of other people’s trash. Ideas are everywhere but you need to become aware of them. The only way God can breathe on you those life changing ideas is when you become available and tune in to him through prayer, reading his word and walking with him everyday in holiness and humility.

Are you available?

Desiring God: Desiring Goods

In our last discussions we labored to show that branding is about differentiation, competition, and segmentation. Marketing is about satisfying desires and needs of a target audience. The mission of the church is to build a universal community of believers characterized by unity, fellowship, mission, and an overriding desire to build the kingdom of God here on earth. Thus Godly desire should be geared toward those purposes for which the church has been created. From the above and the following discussion we are starting to see how church branding and marketing principles can affect the mission of the church.

In his book “Consuming Religion,” Vincent Miller discusses the desire for consumer goods and Godly desires. Miller writes that our society is marked by a massive deployment of infrastructures and practices aimed at eliciting, inciting, and sustaining consumer desire. But what do consumer desires have to do with Godly desires? Or put yet in other words, what does Madison Avenue have to do with Jerusalem? One could try to distinguish these desires by their objects and argue that consumer desire is different from Godly desire because the former is focused on material things. Miller however adds that consumer desire does not start and end in the desire for material things. Consumer desire exploits more profound longings- a desire for more than just goods. If a church concentrates on giving people what they need, it misses the big point which is that people are obsessively consuming things because there is a void within them which can only be satisfied by God.

As Augustine puts it, consumerism tempts us to become entangled in the “love of low things,” which causes our advance to be impeded and sometimes even diverted and we are held back from our pursuit of “higher things.” Thus, rather than turning our hearts towards what can truly fulfill us, we squander our love on petty objects, rendering ourselves unclean in the process. For Augustine, we should and, in the end, can only enjoy God. Nothing else can fulfill our desire. The myriad cultivations of consumer desire seem quite literally to encourage us to enjoy lower things. But lower things cannot satisfy us. The human person can never be fully satisfied with finite objects and, as a result, is constantly searching for more.

Thus, however unwisely man may choose what to set his heart on, he will eventually be spurred on to seek more, since man is made for fellowship with the divine, and only that will satisfy the profundity of man’s desire. Every church should strive to sell this idea- that it is only God who can satisfy.

Consuming Sacred Bread at Individual Tables

The calling of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost began to produce what 1 Peter calls a “race, priesthood, nation, and people” (1 Peter 2:9-10), a worldwide multicultural fellowship of witnesses. The people of God, in all their cultural diversity, may be understood as a universal community of communities. The particular church community is, in an essential sense, an expression of the universal church. Thus specialization and segmentation advocated for by church marketing compromises this universal personality of the church.

In his high priestly prayer, Jesus set out the purpose of the church as the community of communities:

“I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in me through their word; that they may all be one; even as you, father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me. The glory which you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as we are one; I in them and you in me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that you sent me, and loved them, even as you have loved me.” (John 17:20-23)

This prayer is a central New Testament passage defining the purpose and relatedness of the church. It teaches us that the dimensional connectedness of the church is not merely a matter of institutional unity, and even less of efficiency, stewardship, good public relations, or effective growth strategies. The oneness spoken of here is a matter of obedience to the Lord of the church, obedience that centers on his mission, “so that the world may know that you have sent me.”

The church is not only a community of communities, but it does share in the Trinitarian relationship of Father, Son and Holy Sprit. As Metzger notes in his book “consuming Jesus,” one of the ways the communal and commissioned church of the triune God repositions itself as a divinely communal entity is through the Lord’s Supper. The supper illuminates and intensifies the profound reality of participation: the whole church is present in each assembly, and each local assembly is present in the whole through Christ, their head. In its own community and beyond, each church is to exist for the whole church, not as a specialized enterprise that only cares for its own existence.

This communal nature of the church removes the emphasis from the organization and places it on the collective relationality of its members. The church as an organization must serve the purposes of the triune God within the body. Thus the mission of the church goes beyond self-preservation to becoming an instrument for building community. The church’s goal is not serving the organization’s own ethics and purposes, but leading the organization to fulfill a more universal purpose as a representative servant of God on earth. The church works for the ultimate order of manifesting the glory of God, of becoming a people of God, of serving the purposes of God, and of fulfilling the plan of God.
A community-centered people of God must orient their desires not towards their personal good feelings but towards the broader category of the will of God on earth; which brings me to discussing personal desires as compared to religious desires.

Until next time,

Happy new year to you all!