Consumer to Fan, to Community, to Family
by Darren Moore
I have been recently reading “Business for Punks” by James Watts. No, this is not a blog about beer, although you can find one here. Nor am I going to discuss bullying and other work place abuses, that have recently marred Watts’s reputation. To be clear, the book has nothing Christian about it at all! And some of the language is choice, shall we say. The book is a bit of an oversell. Bits aren’t punky at all, to do with controlling cash flow (probably very useful if you are starting a small business) and the bits that are, really, are just gimmicky.
However, were a few things about how they grew their brand (BrewDog) that says something about what people really are looking for and how the Church can go one better.
Their idea is, whatever you are selling (in their case, beer), don’t have as your mission statement “sell more beer” (or get more gym members… or people to Church). Rather, make it your mission to change the world. Well, already as Christians we have something to say there, but we will resist, for the moment.
The first stage in this is not just lower prices or put out more adverts, but change the relationship with the consumer, from consumer to fan. They would not just buy the product but follow it. The consumer, or fan then becomes the best advert. What beer would you drink? One you saw an ad for, or came with a recommendation? For that matter, it is true for any other product.
How do they do this? By moving one step further, from fan to community. Watts gives examples of successful independent restaurants that have the recipes of their signature dishes on their website, fans try to emulate what they get in to restaurant and they discuss it online forming a community. BrewDog do similar things (sell homebrew kits so people can try to replicate, they take suggestions for new products etc. which both increases their fan base and forms a community between the fans and the company. These modern, often a bit cool, companies have tapped into what people feel they need and so often missing - belonging.
What about the Church? Our culture soaks so deeply into us that we cannot avoid a consumer model (by the way, we really should try to avoid it!). Christians know that Church is important and they benefit from it. But, it is hard to escape a transactional model. I give a tithe and serve, then withdraw the services that I need. The choices we make about Church are consumerist. We may choose a Church because, like TESCO it has everything that we could need, provided for us under one roof. In my city, Chelmsford, Waitrose were poised to open a branch, not to feed to starving masses, but to take some of TESCO’s market share - something Churches are also prone to. Columnist, Timothy Stanley commented “Evangelism is a game Christians play between themselves”. But, the Reformed aren’t like that are we? No? We’re not TESCO, we’re more like the hipster organic green grocer, we don’t offer as much, our lighting isn’t as cool, but it’s so so pure, that we can cash in on others’ dissatisfaction.
However, we have a great product in the gospel. And better than a product, a person Jesus Christ, who is an easy person to make fans for (although he generates some opposition too). We don’t have to do anything to make him more attractive, he has done all that work for us. We need to move people from being inward-focused consumers (even on the right things), to fans of Jesus Christ.
But, more than fans, a community, Jesus built his Church around him. And more than a community, that shares ideas, a family, intimately connected to each other. Yes, we have Jesus in common. But, we actually now love and serve each other.
Reading the book, mostly, made me think how different the Church is from business. But, on this idea of changing the world, put out as new and revolutionary, was a very faint tarnished imitation of what God has been doing for quite some time.
As we think about our mission statements, we should be thinking less about our market share of existing Christians, rather our aim is nothing short of changing the world with our message, introducing them to Jesus Christ through the loving family of a local Church.
