Journalist Peggy Noonan recounted in an editorial that Steve Jobs thought that the product should drive a company, not the sales force. Jobs thought that decline occurred at great companies when "the company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important. The company starts valuing the great salesman, because they're the ones who can move the needle on revenues." Those who are producing the product, engineers and designers; the thinkers that got the company to its present status are no longer important. Noonan says, "Their efforts are no longer at the white-hot center of the company's daily life. They 'turn off.' IBM and Xerox, Jobs said, faltered in this way. The salesmen who led the companies were smart and eloquent, but 'they didn't know anything about the product.' In the end this can doom a great company, because what consumers want is good products" ("A Caveman Won't Beat a Salesman," WSJ, 19 November 2011, A15). When I read this it hit me like a ton of bricks. I wondered if the church hasn't done precisely this by emphasizing so-called missionality (whatever that means) over the gospel content, which is the product of the church. Has the church, too, emphasized sales over the product? The revenue side for the church, of course, is the number of people in the pews and the offerings they represent.

 

Perhaps the church should ponder this worldly wisdom of Steve Jobs. Have the sales people taken over the church, cutting the importance of the product of the church, which is the proclamation of the evangelical truth? Now technique is more important than the proclamation. Delivery is more important than content. Packaging is more important than what is packaged. Is the church becoming the Xerox of the religious world? It is not as though the people committed to sales are bad or intend to hurt the product; it's just that they don't know anything about it. This will cause an inevitable decline in the company of the church. Kyrie, eleison.

 

The "white-hot center" of the church's life is the gospel of Jesus Christ. If the sales people get control of the company of the church, then those who produce the message will certainly "turn off." Could it be that declining seminary enrollment is a symptom of that turning off? The theological content is presumed, a given; no longer a matter for the deep and long consideration of the church's theologians; no longer the powerful product of the church's pulpits, printing presses, and classrooms. There has been far too much talk about the church being mission (sales) driven, when the talk should be about the church being led by a quality product (the gospel). If the product is at the forefront of he church's life, then the Lord Jesus will be the one who is leading the company which He has purchased with His own blood. Those whom He has called will find themselves at the white-hot center of His heart in the message of the gospel, which is the product of the church. Bishop Theodoret of Cyrus (c. 393 - c. 457) was very much about a good product in the church.