The Poor Selling of Salvation 2

I wrote a piece on my views about how we set our stalls as churches, and drew the parallel between church life and how that translated into a retail experience. My hope was that it represented a poor experience for the visitor, born of far too much presumption. If you fancy a read, here is the link.

In a comment made about the post (to my face), it was said that it closed too early, and I acknowledge that there is more that can be said, and perhaps should be. Thanks for to Stuart over at eChurch Christian Blog for inspiring me today with his article on IKEA and the mean means that they use to get you to buy their buyable bits and bobs! Again, visit him here - it is a good read!

Retailers have a fairly complex science that is designed to get you in, make you stay, buy more and then come back. Terms like 'units per transaction [UPT]', 'average transaction value [ATV]', 'key performance indicators [KPI]', 'loss-leading lines', and so on. Add to that background music that is not at all accidental, and is, in fact geared to mimic the desired heart-beat of the 'desirable' customer, and you have a Palace of Manipulation. That is retail, it always was, do not be upset. 

In short, a retailer's best endeavour is to convince their customer to increase their UPT. They achieve this by arranging their stores in a very specific way (IKEA being a fine example of this done well). You do the work for them - you pick up items you didn't come in to buy. In other establishments, the more sales-orientated ones (furniture, flooring, electrical, vehicle), it is less likely that serendipity will increase their UPT, so a KPI for the sales-staff (and often a way that they are rewarded) is simply to ask you to buy something else as well as the thing to came in to buy. You will not buy a carpet without being asked for your underlay needs. You will not buy a car without being asked about warranties. And so on. In increased UPT will drive up the ATV, and with add-on sales being the more lucrative for the retailer (and what we really want you to buy if we are honest), the margin (profit) increases exponentially. In my retail life, I was the expert at maximising gross-margin - a less than noble claim, perhaps!

If I remove the language of commerce and profit, I believe that there is some mileage in this mindset being applied to the prize on our own stalls: The Lord Jesus Christ, son of God. We are not in the business off selling, of course, but we are in the market (in part) for making disciples and hoping that they stay and become loyal. We are here to enhance the experience, meet needs with the benefits on offer, commend the experience - and we always hope to know if that was a worthy experience and learn from failures. The same as retail in any form.

If we take the 'belong, believe, behave' model of Christian discipleship - there is a direct parellel between discipleship and commercial enterprise. When we open our churches, they should grab people off of the streets - and this can be done in many ways. Darkness, closed doors, no 'staff', emptiness - all these things are barriers. Locked doors can never be entered, if it indeed it needed saying. Many people will come into our churches without a 'master plan' to do so. Life brings them in to our communities and places of worship - so we have to be focussed on what enhances the experience and encourages a lengthier stay. Then the next visit, and then the third. Increasing the quality of the experience will add value to the visit for the person in question (their transaction value,in other words?). We meet their needs, by the way - not tell them what their needs are! If we are blessed, and they identify a reason to stay and not frequent the competition, they will become more and more involved in the life we would then share (doing more, units per transaction, perhaps). 

This is not intended to be a needless contortion of two distinct worlds. I have learned much from retailing, and believe it has much to offer church life. If all Christians paid the same quality of attention to newcomers as sales-staff do in stores (irrespective of motivation), then our churches would be filled to capacity, and then some. I could write more, but this post is ample enough!

The Pointlessness of Christmas?

I am guessing that you are wondering where this post is going, with a title such as this. You are not alone.

I am not sure if this is a world-spanning phenomenon or just a quaint British one, or if any of you who are reading this have noticed it. Our tellies are replete with adverts selling flooring, furnishing and white goods. Most are advertising the Sale-in-Perpetuity, offering baggy settees for 'five-nine-nine', reduced from something daft like £1700.00. It's legal but it doesn't reflect the absolute letter of truthfulness either, but it is not that which I seek to examine.

At the moment, those adverts will have a little seasonal clause:

"Buy your three-piece suite before 11:16am on December 8th and we will ....."

"Order your flooring before 02:52 on Sunday 5th December and we will ..."

"Cough up the wonga before the close of trade yesterday and we will ..."

"Sign your life away in our stores before you next take breath and we will ..."

What? What is the panacea to which all retailers cling in these weeks? Yes ...

...they will GUARANTEE delivery/fitting before Xmas/Christmas...

Now, I am a cynic, so in the spirit of open-mindedness, I have to ask if these noble cash-purloining emporia are hoping to render your homes to the status of perfect in time for the moment of the Incarnation. Are they concerned that the entire population will want to return home from a Christmas Mass to a brand spanking new shag-pile? 

Of course not - don't be daft. I am fairly sure that Lord Harris of Peckham, or the present owner of the beleagured Allied Carpets, or the top honchos of DFS or Dreams are fixated on the 'Away in a Manger' thing, and let's be honest - none of us are that worried about having a new lounge carpet or furniture that we won't be at home to enjoy? Are we? You'd be surprised. I use to take sales in June that would be intended for supply in the week before Xmas/Christmas, quite routinely.

It seems that British culture 'gets' Christmas in its own quirky off-centre way. Churches will be busy just shy of midnight on Christmas Eve with people who won't have stumbled through the doors since the last year. Yes, they might have had a drink, but a symptom of inebriation is not typically a zeal for an encounter with a deity. The retailers frame the importance that we innately hold for a day, and for a season, for which the meaning so often seems lost. Perhaps it was never lost, just rather it has become less religious. The press would have us believe that most of our little kiddies have no idea what Christmas is about; disavow yourselves of that idea now.

White vans will be hurling consumer durables around our streets for the next few weeks, all labouring under what seems at the face of it to be a rather odd deadline - the birth of Jesus Christ. They will never use that language, but in the end, they are selling to a market that regards Christmas as holy at some level or another, and of not holy, as special - the only day in the year that we ever work towards in this way.

School Shoes and Easter Eggs

Firstly, noble reader, I must apologise for not spewing forth this last few days. Sometimes, the Day Job gets in the way - you know how it is!

Today I want to grumble about something ["Makes a change, Farv", I hear you hollerin']. 

I was watching the Gogglebox over the weekend, ensconced as I was amid the gubbins of the Matriarch, and an advert appeared which took me wayyyyyy back to my halogen days of yoof. It is was a 'Back To School' advert for some shop or other. It reminded me of those bitter-sweet days of yore, the last day of school when half of me couldn't wait to get the hell out, and the other part of me that is clingly and needy and would miss the routine of daily school life. Normally, the Scarper Tendency won, and I can still remember a considerable number of those moments when I left the school for the last time for the summer. We weren't a family for copious foreign holidays so I had the prospect of a whole six weeks at home mucking about with the others in the park or at home - blissssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.

 I used to spend the odd summer back in the Homeland with my Nan and Grandad - memorable and wonderful days of Sesame Street, Painting with Nancy, Laurel and Hardy, Crossroads (with Benny and Miss Doi-anne) and Granada News at Six. We would go to Oldham Market and Nan would buy me gladly recieved plastic crap that only an 8yr old could love. We'd have Scotch Pies for lunch, perhaps a trip to Presto for something for Grandad's tea, a drop by the big Co-Op where Nan used to work - then past C&As where it all went horribly wrong - 'Back To School', on the 18th of frigging July!

It must happen now for the little poppets as they gaze forth to a near-eternity of holiday wonderfulness - only to be assaulted in so many media by the stark reminder that they will have to go back to school sometime. Leave the kids alone, man! Oh, the humanity!

But it happens in all walks of life. I have no doubt that supermarket warehouses will already be holding full pallets of Christmas fodder. By the 3rd of January, Easter fodder starts to find its way to the shelves. Fourteen seconds after the Lord rises from the tomb, summer-holiday fodder is called to the front. We are in such a hurry ..... The problem with this is not so much the cynical profiting from religious feast days the meaning of which has been lost by most, but more because in all this hubbub of retail foreshortening, the year seems shorter and increases our sense of hurry. It is the McDonald's effect - food presented for delictation in less than minute that causes the punter to neck it at Warp Factor Nine. Speed begets speed. Hurry begets hurry. 

I know that in about eleven seconds it will be Easter 2011. I daren't sleep anymore, life is happening too fast now. I might miss a Christmas and a Valentine's Day if I use the loo. Welcome to the 24/7 World that never stops, even if you are caused to by the needs of living.