Fitting the Pieces

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During this time when so much of the world celebrates the advent of Jesus as the Messiah, I’d like to ask, “Was Jesus a great example for home business sales and marketing?” After all, the focus of this blog is fitting the right pieces together for a successful home business. Should we study what Jesus did in order to come up with a model entrepreneur?

Many books have been written about Jesus and leadership, Jesus and home finances, Jesus and education, Jesus and selling. There is no doubt that Jesus was himself a teacher, but even the quickest reading of the Gospels will establish that the purpose of his training was not to create wealthy businessmen!

By the way, I have nothing against a goal of gaining wealth even though I cannot accept that Jesus taught a “health and wealth” gospel.

Nevertheless, in a book called, God Wants You to be an Entrepreneur, Rickey Singleton writes,

An entrepreneur is one that undertakes an enterprise; one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise. We need to let God bring out of us the glory of being an entrepreneur. We have Christ in us, the greatest entrepreneur that ever lived. Jesus was an entrepreneur. He was in the business of building the church and prior to that he was a carpenter who built furniture. Being a builder, He also had to organize, manage, and assume the risks of his daily business. He had employees that he was responsible for, the twelve disciples, who each had their own businesses. (Page 38)

Some Fallacies in the “Jesus was the Greatest Entrepreneur” or “Jesus Was the Greatest Salesman” Position

I have found a lot of writing like that, and it bothers me. It is a gross sleight of hand to say

• that an entrepreneur is someone who … assumes the risks of a business or enterprise. The word entrepreneur is correctly associated with business – period. To extend it to the promotion of a belief system, to the recruitment of followers for political purposes (as many of Jesus’ first disciples actually believed) is wrong. It is an abuse of semantics when a writer modifies the meaning of “entrepreneur” to further the point of his book. What is an entrepreneur? Admittedly the term gets debated (see my article, “Qualities of an Entrepreneur“), but any definition is anchored within the context of business – making money.
• Jesus was in the business of building the church. During Jesus’ life on earth, he was not building his church. He was establishing his claim, with selected followers, that he was a divinely inspired teacher or (depending on your theology) the Messiah. He spoke of building the church in the future, as in “on this rock I will build my church.”  The best one could say was that he lay the groundwork for building the church. But unless one chooses to be really cynical, Jesus did not see the church as a business, an organization for making a profit.
• the disciples were employees. Employees are paid to do work and the disciples did not sign on with Jesus to make a living. They followed Jesus around because they admired what he said and did. To them, Jesus was a rebel leader to oppose the Romans or a spiritual guru.

So, I take exception to the approach that Singleton takes. Along a similar vein, Rich Vincent, a Baptist pastor, takes exception to Bruce Barton’s description of Jesus as “the great advertiser of his day.” Was Jesus the greatest salesman? Was Jesus the greatest entrepreneur?

Frankly, if you are looking for a model marketer for your small business, I would not advise you to ask, “What did Jesus do?”

• Jesus annoyed a lot of people and was put to death by an angry mob. (JN 10:19-20, LK 23:1-24) Antagonizing people is not the way to build a business.
• Jesus indicated that his message would cause hatred and turmoil. (MT 10:21-36) Using a message that stirs up hate does not gain positive publicity for your business.
• Jesus placed a value so high on his message that many (most?) were unable to afford it. For example, the price to obtain the fruit of his message was, at the least, giving up one’s family (LK 9:57-62) or else everything (LK 18:22). A good marketer analyzes his target market and devises a product and price to meet their resources.
• Jesus delivered a public, blistering, and very personal attack on his competitors. (MT 23)  Negative advertising will not attract. It can even turn off some of your best customers.

These are just a few examples -a bit tongue in cheek- that explain why I think using Jesus’ life and actions as a model for that of an entrepreneur to be ridiculous.  You can see how easy it is for me to cherry-pick my Biblical passages, however.

On the other hand, some of Jesus actions (washing the feet of his disciples, storytelling, etc) and more importantly his moral teachings do provide valuable application to business decisions and communications, since these are, after all, like all life decisions and communications.  John Labriola, in Christ-Centered Selling: A Scripturally Based Guide to Principled, Profitable Persuasion, does a good job of finding the Bible passages that support a winning marketing style. Still, books like these contribute to an essentially incorrect view of the nature of the Bible. The Bible was not written as a Business Handbook anymore than it was written as a Science Handbook.

Zig Ziglar said: “Any fair-minded individual will agree that its author Jesus Christ was the greatest salesman who ever lived. He was also the greatest sales trainer who ever lived.” As you can see above, I do not necessarily agree with that.

Try This: Be Happy When You See Congruence

I think it is possible to determine what makes for successful principles of selling and marketing without cherry-picking passages from the Bible to suit your purposes. Where there is congruence with your faith, delight in it. For example, the Christmas message of “goodwill toward men” is basic in attraction marketing. You need not study the Bible to learn marketing, but you may be glad, perhaps, for the congruence when it is there.

If you must disregard everything I wrote about, OK, here are some books I found while thinking about this article:

Related posts:

1. Attraction Marketing and the Spirit of Christmas
2. Does Google “Suck” and Is Facebook the Greatest Kept Secret?
3. Find Yourself a Mentor! OK, But What’s a Mentor?