Exclusively For Everyone

Marketing guru Seth Godin has noted, on his blog, that being exclusive builds sales: Credit card companies have made billions by selling a card that others can’t get … and of course, the best nightclubs have the biggest velvet ropes and the pickiest doormen.

Limiting the supply of your service, or the quantity of your product, or being aggressive in who you sell to (and who you don’t) are all time-tested ways to build a killer brand. Humans like being insiders, and will work hard to create their own imaginary demarcations to demonstrate that they’ve made it inside…

The first thing I’d ask myself before launching a product, a service, or a candidate is, ‘who are we leaving out?’ If the answer is no one, be prepared for uncharted waters. The future of marketing (at least the big successes) is going to be fueled by those with the guts to embrace the masses. The profits, at least in the short run, may well be found by those that embrace exclusion.

Jesus said: ‘S/He who is not against me is for me’, but also ‘S/He who is not for me is against me.’ He included all kinds of marginal people in his movement, and got into trouble for it. The Kingdom only grows when people feel special but also open to outsiders. There’s a coherence principle and an inclusion principle. They belong together. Can Liturgy, symbol and art, perhaps, help to bind everything together?

Groucho Marx, famously, once said he wouldn’t want to be a member of any club that would have him as a member. The Church of England, with its universal parish system, lack of heresy trials, and legal structure, tends to include everyone in. It’s a worked example of the joys and perils of open source thinking. In practice, the most exclusive and demanding churches grow fastest but seldom seem to get much bigger. The least are always in decline, but seldom die out.

Some Church growth is a marketing process driven by exclusivity, guilt or chauvinism. It can be very powerful, like any cancer. Its invasive, high control methods require firm hard boundaries, with insiders harder on outsiders than themselves. Ideals never quite translate into action, and the ceiling to growth is that of the marketing paradox to which Seth refers.

Organic growth, often slower, binds people into a community based on mutual recognition, not control. People with porous boundaries are usually harder on themselves than outsiders.

Powerful bonding is also generous and outward-looking. Thus the exclusion paradox is transcended.

When we talk and pray about evangelism, what exactly do we have in mind?

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