Using Marketing to Promote Christ

World View and Vocation

Introduction

Everyone is called in life to do something, whether it is to serve God in the church, start a family, obtain a career in the world, or use whatever talents God has given one in some other way. Discerning one’s vocation is an important part of growing up and assuming responsibility in one’s life. Realizing a vocation, however, depends upon one’s ability to obtain direction, guidance, support, and awareness. It involves prayer, study, and reflection. Once discerned, one then has to consider how one should approach one’s vocation by incorporating Christian principles into one’s guidance. This paper will discuss what I believe my personal vocation to be, what the Christian motives for my vocation are, what Christian guidance offers me, and what my final reflections on the matter are.

Personal Vocation

I believe my personal vocation to be in business marketing. My father is a Baptist preacher, and I have grown up surrounding by the Baptist faith. It has informed my life in so many ways, from giving me a foundation for how to view the world and myself to providing me with a support system for making important decisions in my life. When it came time for me to discern my vocation, I looked at what I believed myself to be good at, what I was drawn to doing, and what it appeared God wanted for me. But Thompson and Miller-Perrin remind us that “God calls a person ‘with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace’ (2 Tim 1:9).[footnoteRef:2] Thus, when I thought of my vocation, I wanted to make sure it would be a way for me to serve God. It is the vocation, after all, that “brings divine meaning and purpose to the life of a Christian.”[footnoteRef:3] I sensed that my calling was to enter into the business of marketing, and that through this vocation I could serve God and apply the talents He has given me in the way He wants them applied. [2: Don Thompson and Cindy Miller-Perrin, “Understanding Vocation: Discerning and Responding to God’s Call.” Leaven 11, no. 1 (2003), 11.] [3: Don Thompson and Cindy Miller-Perrin, “Understanding Vocation: Discerning and Responding to God’s Call.” Leaven 11, no. 1 (2003), 11.]

I arrived at this decision through prayer and reflection. In my early teens I started thinking about how I could serve God and what God wanted me to do with my life. I knew that God gives everyone a special talent that He wants them to use in life.[footnoteRef:4] So I reflected on what I was good at doing and what I enjoyed doing. I realized I liked marketing and was good at finding creative ways to sell an idea to people. I think this came in some way from my dad, who as a preacher is good at “selling” God to people. I learned the art of communication and persuasion from him, and I wanted to apply this in a career. After praying about it, I believed God wanted me to apply the art of persuasion to business so that I could bring God into the business world and promote Him in the world this way. [4: Dragan Bogunovic. Heavenly Wisdom: Talent, Imagination, Creativity and Wisdom (Author House, 2013), 2.]

Christian Motives for This Vocation

Business is not often a realm associated with Christianity and this is unfortunate. Business is really essential to life. Business allows us to own things, produce things, trade things, and live well. It really can be a creative expression that reflects the creative impulse seen in Genesis when God created the world and when He told Adam and Eve to go forth and multiply (Gen 1:28). Business helps people with that proposition: they can work on an endeavor and then bring it to market and exchange the produce of their labor for cash that can be used to purchase something else they need available also in the market place. Because the market is competitive, just like nature, one has to use skills to market one’s products and empower people to buy them. Thus, marketing is a skill that can be useful to support the mandate given by God to people. He does not want people to go out and simply flounder in the world. He wants people to succeed, live well, be strong and happy, because He loves them; He made us all, and He does not wish unhappiness for anyone. So business, to me, is not really something that people should view as somehow antithetical to what God wants of people. It supports God’s plan so long as one is ethical about it.

The ethical motivations for Christians entering into business marketing have to include the need to be honest. It is true that advertisers often make exaggerated promises about how such-and-such product will bring fulfillment and happiness to the lives of the consumers. They contrive ads that show people enjoying the product in a pristine setting where life is an endless succession of utopian moments. I think of Coca-Cola or Pepsi ads when I speak of this type of advertising: they always show happy, attractive people in the best of moods and situations enjoying a cola. But this to me is not really honest advertising. Honesty does not try to fool people or manipulate their emotions. Honesty is a reflection of reality. So in my field, I think the Christian needs to be motivated by honesty, and I believe consumers in the market place can really appreciate honesty in marketing because it is like such a breath of fresh air.

Scripture provides a great deal of insight on how one should approach business: for instance, Proverbs 10:4 states, “A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.” This is good motivation in the field of business marketing because it urges one not to be lazy about what one is doing but to apply the talents God has given and use them effectively. Then there is Matthew 25:14-30, which tells the parable of the talents. In that parable, some servants receive a few talents, others more from the master. One servant thinking it wise decides to bury his talents so as to preserve them. But the master upon his return chides the servant, pointing out how he did not use his talents to increase them while others did. The point of the parable is that one should use what God has given so as to live in abundance, for it is in this manner that one gives glory to God, Who is the source of all good.[footnoteRef:5] God gives more to those who have and takes away from those who have not—and the meaning of this “have” is faith: those who trust in God and use what He has given (because that is what He wants) are rewarded with increase. Those who are fearful and worry that God might not give more if they lose what they have are rebuked as having no trust in God. So the point is that in my field, one has to trust that God will reward one if one is faithful to God. Follow the Christian principle of honesty; have integrity in one’s work, and do not fear that God will abandon you. God gives to see that we are supported and He is pleased to see our creative activity put to good use. I am much comforted about my vocation when I think about it in these terms because I trust that God is leading me on the right path. [5: Robert Sirico, “The Entrepreneurial Vocation,” Journal of Markets and Morality 3, no. 1 (2000), 14.]

Christian Guidance for This Vocation

According to God’s original plan, mankind never would have sinned and the Fall would not have happened. Wolters argues that we have to regain creation by having faith and operating from a standpoint of faith because the Fall did happen—but God has not abandoned us or the world He created: the “new humanity (God’s people) is called to promote renewal in every department of reason.”[footnoteRef:6] The principles built into the created order inform us and they can inform this vocation, particularly that principle which reminds us that all things come from God. We are not here to deceive one another; that is what Satan aims for us. God wants us to glory in Him and that means honoring truth and honesty. Truth in marketing is not something most people find to be commonplace—but I believe that if we are truthful and glorify God, we can bring truth to marketing and people will appreciate that fact immensely. If there had been no Fall, marketing would be easy because it would consist of honest statements about what one has to offer and there would be no competition for place; everyone would be charitable. Charity therefore should govern people in this field. Jackson notes that we have a duty to be honest in marketing because this principle is built-in to our nature by God.[footnoteRef:7] [6: A. Wolters, Creation Regained (Eerdman’s, 2005), 82.] [7: Jennifer Jackson, “Honesty in Marketing,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 7, no. 1 (1990), 54.]

The Fall of course has led us to sin and evil, and in this vocation, people will be tempted to lie or to exaggerate a product’s abilities in order to sell it to the market. Again, companies like Coca-Cola or Nike do this all the time: they associate utopian feelings with their products and consumers believe that by buying their products they will enhance their status or reach a great level of satisfaction. The ethical issue that while this is standard practice in advertising there is more to marketing than commercials: product placement, price, people, and other factors all play a part in how to market effectively. Ethical conduct is needed and honesty sits at the top of the ethical code.[footnoteRef:8] [8: Lawrence Chonko and Shelby Hunt, “Ethics and Marketing Management,” Journal of Business Research 13, no. 4 (1985), 350.]

From the perspective of redemption, I believe I also have a calling to bring people to God through marketing. I already do this to some extent with my internship at College Golf Fellowship. We bring teams to a PGA player’s house and share the gospel and life issues with them. As an intern, I assist in the marketing, booking, lodging and management of the tournament for the Fellowship. It is a great opportunity for me to bring the Redemption into the field of marketing and I find it to be very fulfilling. Business and faith do not have to be separated because as this Fellowship shows one can bring two distinct things—such as golf and Fellowship—together under one roof and redirect the vocation of marketing to Christ. The principles of Christ that apply here are to love one’s neighbor as one love’s oneself and to love God, and we do both with this Fellowship.