The Art of Marketing Jesus

Unleashing the Power of the Gospel through the Lives of Everyday Believers

Robert Wachter

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781725281691, 9781725281684
• eBook ISBN: 9781725281707
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Jesus is the most attractive person in human history. Professional fishermen dropped everything to follow him. Social outcasts were transformed into outspoken ambassadors; sinners, repulsed by their religious leaders, were drawn to Jesus by the scores. Today, everyday believers are called to attract people to Jesus. But how do we do that?God's plan to reach the world is not through commercialism or trendy marketing gimmicks--it's through you. However, some are caught in the performance trap of doing more and trying harder to please God, which produces the unintended consequences of spiritual brokenness and judgmental attitudes that render the believer ineffective at reflecting the heart of God.The Art of Marketing Jesus is an easy-to-understand spiritual growth process that has helped many believers internalize the life-giving promises of the new covenant and produce an abundance of love, joy, and peace in their lives--which is precisely the attitudes and characteristics required to attract people to Jesus.If you want to live free and attract more people to Jesus, perhaps it's time to become a new wineskin. It's time to say goodbye to old thoughts that keep you in bondage and place your light on the lampstand of spiritual freedom.

Chapter 1

Public Relations

If I was down to my last dollar, I would spend it on public relations.

Bill Gates1

Public relations can be defined as the state of the relationship between the public and a company, organization, or famous person. The two most effective strategies used to drive public relations are known as press conferences and press releases. It might surprise you to learn that Jesus used both methods during His ministry. He certainly relied on different tactical elements to achieve His objectives in the first century, but the fundamental concepts were the same then as they are today.

Every marketing professional understands the importance of controlling the content and timing of messages that reach the public. For example, when a company is preparing for a new product launch or noteworthy personnel change, a great deal of energy goes into controlling when and how the information reaches the public. This is perhaps even more important in the realm of celebrity personalities and politicians. Sending out important information to targeted audiences and conducting damage control are part of the process. The information that does reach the general public, whether good or bad, can leave a lasting impression.

On November 17, 1973, during the height of the Watergate controversy, President Richard Nixon made the tactical mistake of uttering five infamous words during a press conference that would ultimately defame his presidency: “I am not a crook.” Those words cemented a shadowy impression about Nixon in the collective mind of the entire country (and the world, for that matter). He intended to affirm the positive, that he’s not a crook, but he made the self-imposed mistake of associating himself with crooks. It was like saying, “I don’t beat my wife.” Not the best moment for Nixon. And, unfortunately for him, it was all too catchy.

More recently, on June 16, 2015, at Trump Tower in New York City, Donald Trump leveraged the power of the press conference to announce his bid to run for the presidency of the United States. Love him or hate him, there’s no denying that Trump is a public relations genius. The mere optics of coming down the famous escalator while standing next to Melania Trump, coupled with the controversial words he spoke that day, generated the equivalent of a public relations atomic bomb that reverberated across the entire world. Trump continued to push his message using the national media apparatus as a sounding board throughout the campaign.

In 2016, the New York Times published an article that demonstrated the extent to which Trump drove the media narrative. The article cited a study conducted by mediaQuant, a leading firm that computes the dollar value politicians receive from the media, which includes news broadcasts, print stories, and social media reach. The results were astounding. Trump earned a whopping two billion dollars’ worth of free media coverage during his campaign and more than doubled his nearest competitor. The article summarized that Trump may have been the most effective candidate in the history of United States politics at earning free media.2 That’s saying a lot coming from the New York Times. Looking back at the campaign, it would seem the public relations strategy worked for Trump—he won the presidency.

When you travel back in time even further and examine how public relations worked in the first century, it’s clear that no news cameras or reporters were on the scene that resembled today’s media culture. During that time, word-of-mouth testimony was the modern form of “breaking news.” As you can imagine, the more credible the witness, the more credible the news story. This was the first-century equivalent of newspapers, social media, and televised news conferences. The Gospels record several ways that Jesus took advantage of every relevant public relations method available at the time. Everything from coordinating important press conferences, to sending out press releases to target audiences, to controlling His publicity through the suppression of certain miracles—we can’t deny that Jesus was highly intentional with His public relations strategy.

The Press Conference

When Jesus was about thirty years old, heaven was in the process of orchestrating a spectacular press conference to announce the launch of His public ministry. As the special day approached, John the Baptist, who had become a well-known prophet, was baptizing people in the Jordan River. One day Jesus came to be baptized too. Although John was hesitant, Jesus insisted that John must baptize Him. What happened next was truly remarkable. When Jesus came out of the water, the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove, for everyone to see. If that wasn’t incredible enough, the event was followed by a voice that thundered from heaven, for everyone to hear, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11).

There is no denying the dramatics of this scene. It’s the only place in the Bible that shows the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit interacting simultaneously. Scholars agree that when God chose to perform notable miraculous signs, such as the burning bush and the parting of the Red Sea, the level of dramatics matched the significance of the spiritual reality being communicated. In this case, ever since Adam took the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden, the fate of humanity rested on the shoulders of Jesus. Centuries of writings and prophecies spoke about His coming. Israel waited patiently for the glorious day to arrive, but it would happen only in God’s sovereign timing. Finally, after waiting hundreds of years, the time had arrived.

After the baptism, Jesus spent the next forty days in the wilderness fasting and preparing for His ministry, the final step before going public with His mission. During the forty days, He endured several temptations from Satan that were meant to derail the mission. Of course, Jesus was victorious over Satan at every turn. At the completion of the fast, Jesus traveled back to His hometown and entered the local synagogue on the Sabbath. Jesus was given the scroll that contained the words from the prophet Isaiah, whereby He located the portion of the Scripture that speaks about the promised Messiah. He then read it aloud to the people: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:17–19).

It was not uncommon for a spiritual leader to read Scripture aloud in the synagogue, but what happened next was most remarkable. Jesus handed the scroll back to the attendant then sat down. The eyes of everyone in the building were fastened on Him. The stage was set, the house was packed, and everyone sat on the edge of their seats, waiting to see what Jesus would do next. At which point, Jesus capitalized on the moment with perhaps the most profound words recorded in the Bible: “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). To underscore the importance of this moment, New Testament scholars agree that Jesus spoke these words to signal the start of His public ministry.

If you think any of these events happened by coincidence, please think again. Jesus chose the most important location in the region, during the most significant Jewish tradition, to announce the commencement of His public mission. He also revealed, in no uncertain terms, that He was the promised Messiah. The press conference was preceded by the Father’s miraculous words of affirmation spoken during the baptism. Every detail was orchestrated in sequential order to reinforce the veracity of the press conference and generate maximum exposure among the most influential leaders in the region. We can only imagine the astonishment of the people in attendance, who witnessed the seven-hundred-year-old prophecy come to life.

The Press Release

Another highly effective method used to accomplish public relations is known as the press release, which is a factual document designed to inform the general public about important news. For example, on January 9, 2007, Apple published a press release that announced the launch of the first iPhone. The announcement still exists on Apple’s website today, appropriately titled, “Apple Reinvents the Phone with iPhone.”3 Businesses will often hire public relations professionals to create newsworthy stories and then seek to get them published with influential media outlets.

Press releases in the first century were not as they are today. Most people were illiterate and there was no press apparatus or internet to publish information to the masses. Back then, instead of online articles and newspaper stands, information was delivered verbally. If someone needed to communicate important news to another person or group of people, a personal messenger was sent on behalf of the news source. Multiple examples in the Gospels demonstrate exactly how Jesus orchestrated perfectly timed press releases to achieve His ministry goals. One of the most obvious was when Jesus announced His intention to expand His ministry to include the gentile people.

Including gentile (non-Jewish) people into God’s redemptive plan may seem natural today, but back then, in the context of the Jewish tradition, the idea was completely absurd. For hundreds of years, it was understood that only people of Jewish heritage could be in covenant with God. However, Jesus was about to reverse that way of thinking in accordance with God’s original plan. When God first told Abraham that he would become the father of many nations, the details surrounding the promise also stated that every people group in the world would be blessed through his seed. Jesus reaffirmed that promise with the following statement, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever who believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Jesus spent the first two years of public ministry focused predominantly within two Jewish regions known as Galilee and Judea. Eventually, He implemented more intentional strategies to reach beyond the Jewish boundaries. To get the attention of the gentiles, Jesus needed to penetrate the barriers of culture and send the powerful message that God’s redemptive plan included them too. When the time was right, Jesus and the disciples traveled across the Sea of Galilee, where a demon-possessed man confronted them. The demoniac lived among the tombs on the outskirts of an area occupied by the Gerasenes, which was part of a larger collection of cities well-populated by gentiles.

The situation with the demon-possessed man was enormously challenging. The demons drove him to the point of complete lunacy, and nobody was able to contain him, not even with chains. To be clear, no mental hospitals or trained medical teams with the resources to help existed at the time. Nor did the society have the wherewithal to deal with the spiritual nature of the problem. Therefore, the gentile people separated the man from their community and placed him on the outskirts of the region where the tombs were located. The word picture we get from this scenario could not be more striking. The demoniac was a dead man walking in every sense of the term. Furthermore, the gentile people were powerless to deal with the severity of his condition.

No matter how bad a situation may look on the outside, good things always happen when Jesus shows up. In this case, Jesus proceeded to heal the demoniac by removing the unclean spirits out of the man and sending them into nearby pigs. We must pause for a moment to consider the magnitude of this miracle. The demoniac represented the living embodiment of what it means to exist under the control of Satan. However, after just one touch from Jesus, the madman was completely delivered from the power of darkness. He went from being a helpless outcast living among the tombs to a completely normal person. Only now, the man was the living embodiment of the power and love of God. Not surprisingly, when the time came for Jesus to leave the region, the man wanted to go with Him. However, Jesus had a different purpose for his life.

Jesus told the former demoniac, “Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you” (Mark 5:19). When the man returned to his hometown, the people were all amazed that he was healed. There was no denying the miraculous nature of the demoniac’s turnaround. One can only imagine the surge of belief that spread among the people following such an incredible display of power. The event was designed to send an important message to the gentile people directly from the headquarters of the Jewish Messiah. Every detail, from the crossing of the Sea of Galilee to the deliverance of the demoniac, was used to inform the audience that Satan was no match for Jesus, and that God loved them too. The press release was carefully written in heaven for the expressed ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Public Relations
• Chapter 2: Attraction Marketing
• Chapter 3: Brand Image
• Chapter 4: Brand Values
• Chapter 5: Brand Promise
• Chapter 6: Brand Integrity
• Chapter 7: Be Loved
• Chapter 8: Belong
• Chapter 9: Be You
• Chapter 10: Brand Story
• Notes
• About the Author