I found this description of the book "Faith-based Marketing" in my junk email ... I think there's a reason why. This scares me ... especially when I read my Bible!
It's the largest, most faithful, highest spending market segment in the United States, yet chances are you have never considered it. America's 140 million weekly church-goers spend $5.1 trillion annually and support the businesses that understand and respect them with near-religious devotion. But to reach them effectively, you're going to need some help.
Faith-Based Marketing provides everything you need to understand the Christian consumer power niche and effectively reach it. It explains who makes up that community, what they want, and what it takes to appeal to them. Then, based on survey research from believers across the country and interviews with experts, it provides practical guidance for creating faith-based marketing plans that work.
In many ways, Christians are no different from other consumers' they are discerning shoppers who put price, value, customer service, and convenience ahead of loyalty to businesses that just happen to be owned by Christians. But they are also a somewhat forgotten market that promises big returns for those businesses that develop real relationships with them. Christians may be ordinary consumers who need the same products as everyone else, but they respond extraordinarily well to marketing approaches customized to their needs.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Becoming who we already are
Something very significant is beginning to change my heart and it is core to what it looks like to live this Christian life. I'm realizing that sanctification has everything to do with the battle in our lives between the lies and the truth. A lot of these truths have been brought to life as I've devoured Rob Bell's two books Velvet Elvis and Sex God in the last week and a half.
As I've worked through some of my core addictive behaviors with a counselor (who is also a big fan of John Eldredge ... an added bonus!), I've realized that, throughout my life, through situations and moments where I've been wounded by things people have said and done, I've believed the lies that Satan has so quickly and easily snuck in and planted in my mind. In those moments, lies like "You're not worth anything", "People are always going to leave you" and "You'll never be the man you want to be" are so easily believed and so I agree with them, and they move from my mind to my heart, take up residence there, and I take them on as my identity. I then start living out of the supposed truth of this identity that I've taken on myself.
It's been an incredibly liberating experience to begin to realize that I don't have to live identified by who I think I am (who Satan tries to convince me that I am) ... because it's a lie! I am a new creation in Christ and because of this, all that He says of me is true. Suddenly the whole idea of putting off the old man and putting on the new is so realistic and practical. Putting off the old man is not only "putting off" the old ways of living, but putting off the very lies that I've lived out of. There is so much below those behaviors and just dealing with them isn't enough because I haven't dealt with the lies that have led me to live that way.
Putting on the new man, then, is the process of renouncing those lies and claiming the truth of Christ in my life. I have to believe, in faith, that who Christ has said I am, is, in fact who I am and that what He says He has done for me is true. I can so easily look at where I am and my perspective of who I am and say that it's not true and that the lies are really who I am. But it's realizing that we are already who Christ has made us (and that's how God sees us) and yet we're not yet that person at the same time. As Christ begins to work in our hearts and change us, we slowly become who he has already declared to be.
I spent so much time trying, out of my own efforts, to trying and be who I believed Christ wanted me to be. Trying to do the right thing is such a huge motivator in my life. But that's not what the Christian life is about (despite what many well-meaning believers will tell you). It's about a relationship with God that is so deep and all consuming that He changes your heart and your attitudes into the person that He already declares you are. And that's where we can find grace. If we can view ourselves and others like Christ views us, then we don't need to feel the pressure to make ourselves and others be who we're supposed to be. We're already there ... now we can just join with each other in journey of becoming who we already are.
I would really encourage you (whoever actually read this blog) to spend time, in the quietness of your heart, to ask the Lord to reveal to you the lies you've believed about yourself and the situations in your life that have lead you to believe those lies. Also ask what you were looking for those lies to fulfill in you and then invite the Lord to bring His truth into the middle of it. It's a long journey of healing, but it's totally worth it! And as we journey together in this long road of grace, we can finally take the pressure off of ourselves and others to be who only God can be in our lives and, in that, be able to give to others out of the grace and freedom we find in Christ.
As I've worked through some of my core addictive behaviors with a counselor (who is also a big fan of John Eldredge ... an added bonus!), I've realized that, throughout my life, through situations and moments where I've been wounded by things people have said and done, I've believed the lies that Satan has so quickly and easily snuck in and planted in my mind. In those moments, lies like "You're not worth anything", "People are always going to leave you" and "You'll never be the man you want to be" are so easily believed and so I agree with them, and they move from my mind to my heart, take up residence there, and I take them on as my identity. I then start living out of the supposed truth of this identity that I've taken on myself.
It's been an incredibly liberating experience to begin to realize that I don't have to live identified by who I think I am (who Satan tries to convince me that I am) ... because it's a lie! I am a new creation in Christ and because of this, all that He says of me is true. Suddenly the whole idea of putting off the old man and putting on the new is so realistic and practical. Putting off the old man is not only "putting off" the old ways of living, but putting off the very lies that I've lived out of. There is so much below those behaviors and just dealing with them isn't enough because I haven't dealt with the lies that have led me to live that way.
Putting on the new man, then, is the process of renouncing those lies and claiming the truth of Christ in my life. I have to believe, in faith, that who Christ has said I am, is, in fact who I am and that what He says He has done for me is true. I can so easily look at where I am and my perspective of who I am and say that it's not true and that the lies are really who I am. But it's realizing that we are already who Christ has made us (and that's how God sees us) and yet we're not yet that person at the same time. As Christ begins to work in our hearts and change us, we slowly become who he has already declared to be.
I spent so much time trying, out of my own efforts, to trying and be who I believed Christ wanted me to be. Trying to do the right thing is such a huge motivator in my life. But that's not what the Christian life is about (despite what many well-meaning believers will tell you). It's about a relationship with God that is so deep and all consuming that He changes your heart and your attitudes into the person that He already declares you are. And that's where we can find grace. If we can view ourselves and others like Christ views us, then we don't need to feel the pressure to make ourselves and others be who we're supposed to be. We're already there ... now we can just join with each other in journey of becoming who we already are.
I would really encourage you (whoever actually read this blog) to spend time, in the quietness of your heart, to ask the Lord to reveal to you the lies you've believed about yourself and the situations in your life that have lead you to believe those lies. Also ask what you were looking for those lies to fulfill in you and then invite the Lord to bring His truth into the middle of it. It's a long journey of healing, but it's totally worth it! And as we journey together in this long road of grace, we can finally take the pressure off of ourselves and others to be who only God can be in our lives and, in that, be able to give to others out of the grace and freedom we find in Christ.
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