Christians are pretty good at saying and pretending, but not so good at doing and truly living, and to compensate for that deficit we have attempted to “brand” our relationship with Jesus, according to Tim Sinclair in his book Branded: Sharing Jesus with a Consumer Culture. Instead of actually trying to change, we have decided to make the world think that we are different, that we are holy, and that we are transformed.
The book goes on to discuss the morality of marketing and the relationship between evangelism and marketing. The author is a radio personality and writer, and he uses his knowledge of communication, the media and advertising to reflect on the ways Christians try to communicate the gospel. Some of the insights in the book:
- For non-Christians to value Jesus, they need to see that He can meet their needs and they need to have a favourable perception of Him.
- A person’s worldview is that person’s reality, and we must be prepared to speak to and through it if we hope to effectively share Christ.
- We are well aware that our message mostly falls on deaf ears, but we count on making some sort of heavenly profit based on the few people who respond.
- Rather than honestly sharing what a relationship with Jesus is like, we hide our inadequacies and gloss over our imperfections, so that our story becomes a lie.
I found the book fairly short, entertaining to read, and full of good advice about how Christians can improve the typically poor and ineffective ways in which we attempt to communicate the gospel.