Paul is the quintessential salesman! All of his letters start essentially the same way. He first establishes his own authority - an apostle called by God. Then he associates himself with someone that his audience can identify with. Here it is Sosthenes. According to Acts 18 (the only other mention of Sosthenes in the Bible), Sosthenes was a synagogue ruler in Corinth. Obviously, the people in Corinth (to whom this letter is written) could identify with Sosthenes. He was "one of them." Next Paul praises his audience. He tells them how good they are. And after that, Paul tells them all that is wrong with them or with their life and he tells them that he has the cure. Paul's cure is Jesus and obeying the will of God. Salesmen sell all kinds of things. The best make you feel like you are a good person, but that you lack something that will help you be a great person. That something you lack is what they are selling. And if you buy what they are selling, you will be happier, healthier, smarter, more popular, or something else.
Salesmen should probably study Paul to learn how to sell better. Paul was totally sold out to what he was "selling." He believed in his "product" so much that he was willing to sacrifice whatever was necessary to "make a sale."
I am not putting down Paul or claiming that Christianity is like buying a useless product on TV. All that I am saying is that the techniques that Paul used to convert people and to lead them or change them is much the same as the techniques used by good salespeople.
I think that is one of the reasons why I was not good at "evangelizing." I am not a salesperson. I do not work in sales because if I did I would probably not eat. I am a thinker and a teacher. I am an analyst. I can support salespeople, but I cannot be one. When I think of the people who were most successful at evangelizing, they were also salespeople. Most of the leaders in the church, those who were successful in "bringing people to the Lord" were salespeople. Many who left leadership or left the church went into sales - not surprising.
I was recently introduced to a business opportunity by a friend in a multi-level marketing scheme. I researched the company and the MLM deal online and found that in fact it was legitimate and could be successful. The friend who told me about this deal was a salesperson. They were successful and they were "offering" me an opportunity to be successful like them. I thought about the offer for awhile. The potential to make money was great. However, I finally admitted to myself that I am not a salesman and that I had to be a salesman to make this work so I said NO to the deal. Thinking about that and coming to grips with who I am, made me contemplate this "salesman" connection to evangelism. And then today I read Paul's first few lines in I Cor and I think about Paul being a salesman.
Interesting!!!
My goal in reading the Bible is to better understand the nature of God and to better understand the nature of man. In I Cor 1, I see that man is naturally predisposed to disagreement, factions, and disunity. God wants us to be unified. It seems important to God that we get along with one another. I guess that means that disunity is from the devil. Unity leads to peace; disunity leads to fights, battles, wars. The world is a disunified place. As I read through the paper I see mention of disunity, threats, fighting, riots, terrorism, fear, and on and on. Countries are disunified (even when they have alliances), government is disunified (political parties against one another, states against the federal government, counties fighthing, people against government, ...), famililes are disunified.
God wants unity. Paul talks about one way to have unity in I Cor 1. I see it as everyone having a proper view of God. God is greater than all of us. God's weakness is greater than our greatest strength! God is so far above us and so much more powerful than us, that there is not even the most basic comparison. God's foolishness is greater than our greatest wisdom. God is awesome and we are nothing in comparison to him. If we all see ourselves relative to God, we will stop seeing our minature marginal differences as being significant. It is like the distances in the universe. The differences between us is like light moving across a room or maybe even around the earth. As noted yesterday, it takes 1 second for light to travel around the earth 7 times. Light across a room is measured in nanoseconds. It would takes 13.7 billion light years to travel to the end of the known border of the universe. When you compare the distance across two different rooms (a fraction of a nanosecond different) to the distance across the universe, the room difference is so insignificant as to be totally and completely meaningless.
Perhaps if just my wife and I saw ourselves relative to God is this way, the disunity that sometimes exists in our life would go away. Maybe that is where I should start. I cannot change the world but I can change myself and those closest to me.
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