Selling – Tim Keller Talks to a Marketing and Advertising Group
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Welcome to the Gospel in Life podcast. What if the gospel didn't just shape your private life, but transformed the way you show up in the world? One of the most visible places that would play out is in your work. Join us as Tim Keller teaches on how the gospel reshapes the way we approach our jobs. After

Now, those of you who write in marketing,

Advertising. Probably know this. In fact, it's perfectly fine that some of the rest of you aren't. You can't define yourselves as people who are actually in marketing. But, of course, an awful lot of people who, if you're in business for yourself, you're in marketing. And if you're in a sort of small business, you have to do it yourself.

And you probably know that the subject of marketing and promotion and advertising is one of great controversy, both in the church and in our culture in general. A lot of people have an incredibly negative view of it. In fact, not too long ago, I heard somebody say that advertising is the first profession. And you can see it in the Garden of Eden. It's where the serpent said, you need that apple.

And the person who was making the point was trying to say, here's how they define marketing. Marketing is creating need in somebody else for your profit, whether they really need it or not. Now, that's pretty negative. On the other hand, you could actually make a case that marketing and promotion and public relations and advertising is the oldest profession because of where the place where the Bible says, in the beginning was the word. And God invented communication.

And what is communication? It's making yourself heard loud and clear. And in many ways, I mean, at its best, that's all marketing is, is communication. It's getting people to hear what's happening. They otherwise wouldn't do it without you. Now, let me talk to you about what some of these controversial issues are because they actually have to do with our subject tonight, which is how can you integrate...

Christian faith with your work of marketing and advertising and promotion. And I'd just like to give you some preliminary ideas, but first we have to understand some of the issues, and here's what they are. What's marketing, by the way? Marketing, according to Brian Norris, who's just, you know, at least a lot of people have written about it, but this seems as good as any. Marketing is four things. Marketing is defining a qualified universe of potential users of a product.

Then analyzing the needs and interests of that target group. Thirdly, capturing the attention of the target group. And then, fourthly, getting potential users to become actual users of your product. Now, why? Because you're connecting your product to their needs and interests that you've determined in your research. And there it is. Now, what's wrong with that? Well, most people say nothing's wrong with it, but you can get out of hand, so...

Ethics is the issue, right? And actually, you know, the American Marketing Association has a wonderful...

Wonderful. That's a little too high, but really very, very helpful. Very helpful, very detailed, non-controversial. I mean, I don't think anybody could disagree with it. Set of a code of ethics. Have you read them? They're easy to find on the Internet and elsewhere, I'm sure. The American Marketing Association has a code of ethics for marketers and advertisers. And I'm not reading you the whole thing, but here's some of the headings. Honesty.

Interesting. I wouldn't have thought. I guess I haven't been in it enough to know that. He said,

We will honor our explicit and implicit commitments and promises. Then on and on. Fairness is a good one. To try to balance justly the needs of the buyer with the needs and interests of the seller. We will represent our product in a clear way in selling, advertising, and so on. Then there's another one here, which has to do with what's called respect. We will value individual difference. We will listen to the needs of our customers, make all reasonable efforts to monitor and improve their satisfaction on an ongoing basis, and so on. Is that enough? Yes.

In other words, you know what marketing is, defining a targeted group of people to buy a product, learning what their interests and needs are,

getting their attention and connecting your product to their needs so they become users of it or buyers of it. And as long as you're honest about it, as long as you give them things they really need and tell the truth about the value of it, as long as there's honesty and responsibility and fairness and all that, that's it, right? That's all you need to know. Isn't that true? And actually, in that situation, certainly Christianity doesn't have a whole lot to do with it. No, it's not all there is.

And let me try to show you why. Miroslav Volf up at Yale gave a very little answer to a question that Catherine and I were in the group when he did this. He did a little presentation. Someone said, how does your faith shape your work? How does your religious faith, your Christian faith in particular, shape the way in which you do your work, no matter what your work is? And he said there's four ways. And the first one is blessing, support,

Ethics and story. Blessing means you actually ask God to bless your work. You rely on him. You pray to him. You ask God for success and help.

Don't overlook that. That's one of the ways in which your faith shapes your work, energizes you, fortifies you. Secondly, support is God gets you through the times of failure, the times of difficulty, partly because since God's the most important thing in your life, it to some degree demotes the importance of economic success. All by itself, that helps you get through the hard times.

So first of all, blessing. Secondly, support. Thirdly, ethics. Now, ethics means every religion, including Christianity, has certain things like the Ten Commandments, has certain guidelines, do's and don'ts about behavior. And of course, actually, if you take a look at the American Marketing Association's code of ethics, it probably fits in with Islam, too, and most other religions, but it certainly fits in with Christianity.

But he doesn't stop there. We said there's four ways in which your faith shapes your work. Blessing, support, ethics, and story. That is, every religion, and Christianity certainly, tells you what is actually happening in the world, what God is doing in the world, gives you the story of history. It says, what is history about? What is human life about? What is God doing in the world? What is the big story? And then...

You must, as a Christian, put your work inside that story. You've got to contribute to that story. You've got to be part of that story with your work. That is the most sophisticated way and the most nuanced way in which your faith should shape your work. And I've been thinking about it in terms of marketing, you know, to be here with you tonight. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized how important that is, especially for you.

Because the fact of the matter is, if you just say, I do my marketing and I'm honest about it, that's not enough. There's something else required for deeper integration of your faith and your work. In fact, the code of ethics, as good as they look at first on the American Management Marketing Association's website, actually are inadequate unless you put the ethics into the context of a bigger story about what's actually happening in history. Now, what do I mean by this story? Well,

What's a story? And by the way, marketers should certainly know this. Advertisers should certainly know this. A story has three parts to it or it's not a story. By the way, you can get this from, oh, I didn't write it down. The Harvard Business Review about three years ago had an article in it, mainly for CEOs, on how not to just give charts and graphs but to tell a story in order to get across their vision. Anyway, in the article he said a story, the author said the story's got three parts to it. How life ought to be

Something knocks life off balance. And then the effort to restore that balance, which can be either successful or failure. In other words, three little pigs each build a house is not a story. But three little pigs each build a house and the big bad wolf came and blew down the first two houses and the other two ran into the third house and the big bad wolf came to the brick house. Now we've got a story. Okay, now we've got a story. A story is here's how life ought to be.

here's something that's knocked it off balance, and here's what we're going to have to do in order to put it back into balance. And you have protag, you have antagonist, you have a struggle, and is it successful or not? Some stories can have a happy ending, some stories don't. Now, everybody has a working theory of what the world story is. And what I mean by the world story is, you've probably heard the term worldview. Well, a worldview is just a particular set of answers to the questions that

How should the world be? What has gone wrong with it? And what will put it right? Now, everybody's got a working theory about that. And your answers to those three questions are necessary for you to just live life.

Now, there's a lot of ways you could say that's the – everybody's got a working understanding of what the big story is. You could say everybody's got a worldview. You could also say everybody's got a narrative identity. That's kind of a highfalutin phrase, but I like it because a narrative identity means your big narrative, that is what you think the big story is in life, what life is about, what's important to be done, how you decide right and wrong, who human beings are, what we should be doing with our lives. A narrative identity is you have a big narrative and you're living out of that narrative.

So, for example, if you believe that when you die you rot, there's probably no afterlife, we got here through evolution, and basically the meaning of life is every human being ought to be free to do whatever will make him or her happy as long as doing it doesn't get in the way or impede the freedom of other people to do the same thing. Now, that's a worldview. That's a narrative identity. That's an answer to the question.

The world just happened by accident, and the reason it's off is because nature is red in tooth and claw, and what life is about is being happy. And you have to construct your own values, and you just need to keep out of the way of other people trying to do the very same thing. Or if you're a Christian, you say, God invented the world, and it has fallen through sin, and now God, through Jesus Christ, is creating a new people.

for himself and that's a pilot plan for the new heavens and new earth that's going to be restored in the future. So the Christian story is creation, fall, redemption. The Christian story is God made the world to be a place of peace and love. Secondly, because of our sin we now are selfish, we're individuals. We use other people, we put our own needs first.

Third, redemption through Jesus Christ. God is turning, he's creating a new humanity, the church, based on love and service instead of power and selfishness. And eventually that new humanity is going to be, it's a pilot program for how the whole world will be eventually. Those are very, very different big stories, narrative identities, worldviews. Now, what difference does that make to marketing? It makes a lot. And here's what I mean. First of all,

Ethics, ethical codes, you know, honesty codes, without grounding in the big story will not give you enough motivation to stick to those ethical codes. Now, here's what I mean by that. One of the things that's so irritating about all of our business schools and all of our marketing schools is they all have now ethics codes.

Part of the reason why there's more and more emphasis on business ethics and marketing ethics and codes of ethics and classes in ethics, you know why. Because there's more breakdowns than ever. Fifty years ago, people just wouldn't even think of doing many of the things that they're doing now in every area. Nobody trusts anybody else. So when you get into those classrooms, they lay out things like these codes of ethics. But here's the question. Do this to your teachers. If you're ever in one of these again, please do this.

They say you need to be honest and you need to respect people and you need to care about the weak and you need to, in the environment, all that. Just say, why? Why should I be ethical? Why should I be honest? Why should I have responsibility? Why should I be transparent? Why, why, why? Now, you see, as soon as you ask that question, why, you're saying, ground this in a particular account, right?

Of what this world is about and what is right and wrong and how you decide what human nature is and so on. Grounded in some particular account about what life is about. Some big master narrative, some story. Please. Because frankly, every set of ethics has to be grounded in a worldview. So when you ask these people, these folks, well-meaning people, honest people in the business schools, why –

They say, well, now, you know, they realize they can't answer that question without getting into religion of some kind. So even to say, well, I think that when you die, there's no afterlife and this world is all there is and we came here by evolution. That's faith. You know that. You cannot know that there's no afterlife. You can't be sure there's no God. That's a leap of faith. So even when you start to give so-called secular answer, it's a secular faith answer. And they don't want to do that.

But press them, and here's what they'll start to do. You know what they'll say? They'll say, you should be ethical because it pays. You should be ethical because, in the end, you'll do more selling. But, you know, you should be ethical because it pays. Then say this, yeah, I know, but being unethical pays too. In other words, if the whole purpose of being ethical is my own selfish self-interest, there's other ways for me to pursue my own selfish self-interest. Are you saying that being dishonest is wrong in itself?

But as soon as a person says wrong in itself, right away, you're into the big story. Now, the fact is, unless this culture gets over its, unless this whole society gets over its blindness to the fact that it actually, that every answer to the question, why should I be ethical, is a religious answer. And people are asking that question. Unless this culture gives them a question, they're just not going to answer. They're not going to do it. The kids aren't going to do it.

When you tell the only reason to be ethical is because it might not pay for you personally, you know what they're going to say? They're going to say, well, I'm pretty smart. I think I've got a system. So first of all, ethics without grounding in a big story, in a worldview, in a Christian worldview, will never be enough motivation to stick to them. I think that's a problem with most of you, but I'm going to say it, and I think it's a problem in our culture, a huge problem. Ethics in our schools have got to be grounded in something.

Admitted secular faith or Hinduism or Buddhism or Christianity or show how they can be grounded in these stories but don't act like it doesn't need to be. In moral – it's character education. In the elementary school and the high schools where they put out these character education, now many states are requiring it. You have to talk about being honest and respecting other people and every human being has dignity and every human being is equal. And if the kids say to the teachers, why –

Why should I act that way? Why do you say that every human being is equal in dignity? Science doesn't tell us this. What makes you say so? You know, the teacher's manuals actually say do everything you can to sort of ridicule the question.

James Hunter wrote a book on character education. He studied every single state. He's a sociologist, and he studied every single state in this country and all the other ones that have these moral character educations. And the real problem is because they're scared to actually ground the ethics in a worldview because they know that gets you into religion. They're desperate to keep the kids from asking the why question.

But when the kids ask the why question, they have to do something. In some cases, the teacher's manuals actually say just ridicule the question. But actually, it's a smart question. And if you can't give the kids an answer, you're not going to turn them into ethical beings. Secondly, however, here's the big problem with marketing. If you look at any code of ethics on marketing, it's all about needs, right? It says make sure, this is what they say, you should only give the customer what the customer really needs.

If the customer doesn't really need this, you shouldn't give it to them. If the customer needs it, you need to give it to them. And actually, marketing is all about identifying needs and balancing the needs of the seller with the needs of the buyer. It's all about giving people what they need, finding what they need, grabbing their attention through their needs. But here's the question. Are all the needs fine?

unless you ground your code of ethics in a story, the story of creation, fall, redemption, you are not, as marketers, going to be able to make the distinction between the kind of needs and desires that are out there that you could market to, but you shouldn't, because God is actually moving history away from those kinds of needs and desires. So, for example, let me give you a kind of obvious example. Heroin. Are any of you selling heroin? Now, let's face it. The needs there...

The market is there. In fact, the need is very strong, I understand, once you're a buyer of heroin. Is there anything unethical about selling people heroin? Of course, everybody across the board would say, of course it is. That's a need, but it's a bad need. It's a desire, but it's a bad desire. It's a bad desire for society. In other words, I shouldn't meet that desire. I shouldn't meet that need. It's bad for the person. It's bad for the family. It's bad for society. It's bad for everybody. Fine. Are there any others?

For example, oh marketers, promoters, and advertisers, sex. Let's talk about sex for a minute.

There's stuff on the side of buses in New York City. I'm 55 years old, or I will be this year. I never thought in my life I'd ever see that sort of thing on the side of a bus in New York City. And you know why it's there. Because it sells. Because you're going after, you know, a marketer does the research and finds out what buttons you push where people get, you're supposed to get their attention, right? Remember that one?

Bruce Norris said, he says, define the universe, figure out the interests and needs of this targeted universe, get the attention of the universe, and then turn them into users. Sex is the best way to do three of the four. And yet, Christians understand that sex, to a great degree, participates in our sin and our idolatry. That real gross and overt and promiscuous sex and pornography distorts the relationship of men to women. We know this.

We're going to you're going to live more and more in a world in which people are going to wonder why you don't do that. I mean, why don't you use that need? Why don't you use that desire? But see, if you know the story of creation, fall, redemption, if you know what desires are distorted by sin and what desires God is moving history away from, he's moving it away from exploitation. He's moving it away from that sort of addiction and idolatry. He's moving it away from that.

He's moving it away from making beauty into an idol. He's moving it away from the illusion of intimacy. I'll get back to this in a second. And therefore, I can't stay on this any longer because sex isn't the only one. The point is you must not, if you know the story, just say any need in the customer is a legitimate need for me to appeal to. And that's really what marketing is all about, finding the needs in the customer and appealing to them. You need to be part of God's story.

in appealing to those desires that God wants to appeal to and that God wants to enhance in the human race and not appeal to those needs and desires that Jesus died to save us from. Thirdly, and this is the most perhaps interesting thing, I want to tell you for that two minutes about a process that an awful lot of smart people in the world, Christian and non-Christian, know is going on in our society and marketers can participate in it.

They don't necessarily have to. I'm not saying all of you are at all because you're all marketing such different things, you know, and you're all promoting such different things. But it's still something that you above all people should know about. And that is the process of commodification. And by the way, if you come to Redeemer, you might have heard me talk about this a little bit in the fall in one of the Proverbs sermons. Commodification is a process by which covenantal social relations are changed to economic exchange relationships.

Commodification is a process by which more and more covenantal social relationships are being reduced to economic exchange relationships. Now, what do I mean by that? Economic exchange relationships are a consumer-vendor relationship. A consumer keeps a relationship with a vendor as long as the vendor meets the consumer's need at a proper cost. So, for example, you might be very friendly to your grocer.

You go into your local grocery store. You may be very friendly to your grocer, and you might get to know them and say, hi, how are the things, and know them by even first name. But the fact is, if suddenly you can buy groceries twice the quality at half the price, you're going to go to the other grocery store. Why? Because honestly, let's face it, you may like the grocer, but it's not about the grocer. It's about the groceries. The relationship is not about the relationship. It's about the product.

It's not about the grocer, it's about the groceries. It's not about the person, it's about what the person produces. Or put it another way, your needs as an individual are more important than maintaining the relationship. The relationship is a means to the end of your needs, not the other way around. However, social relationships, which means marriage, which means parent-child, which means neighbors, which means co-citizens,

Those have always been what was considered covenantal relationships or social relationships. Why? Well, in social relationships, the relationship is not a means to an end of filling your individual needs. It's more important than your individual needs. You stay in the relationship, even whether your needs are being met or not. And here's the reason why. There's two reasons why. Let's just be pragmatic. We happen to know that life, paradoxically, is richer...

When you are in a community surrounded by people who put the needs of the common good over their individual needs. In other words, if you're putting the needs of others and the needs of the community over your own individual tastes and needs, ironically, it's a better place for you as an individual. And you know, we know as Christians why that's the case, because we believe in the Trinity. We believe that creation sprang out of a triune God. God is not unipersonal. He's tripersonal from all eternity.

From all eternity, God has had infinite glory and joy and happiness because the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit defer to each. Each one defers the other. Instead of seeking glory, they give it, and they give love, and they give adoration, and they defer to others. And, of course, the others are deferring. And as a result, God is infinitely happy. And if we could be like that, and we were supposed to be like that, we were made in his image, and human community was made in his image.

So ironically and paradoxically, when I'm in a community of people in which I'm not looking out for my own interests, I'm basically putting the relationship over my individual needs. It's not about the groceries. It's about the grocer, as it were, in a social relationship, especially the grocers, my father or my mother or my spouse or something like that. But you see, what's actually happening in this society – and everybody knows this –

is that there used to be just a few exchange relationships, vendor-consumer relationships. In fact, in small towns, let's face it, even the people you bought from, the grocer, frankly was almost a social relationship. Even when, you know, in small towns, you didn't go to another grocery store because you knew the grocer. That's how bad it was, or maybe how good it was.

But what's happening now is almost everything in this, almost every relationship in our society has moved into the consumer-vendor paradigm. That's why there's so much divorce. That's the reason, by the way, why it's normal to have sex outside marriage. See, in traditional societies, you didn't give somebody sex with you unless that person received your whole being for the rest of his or her life.

You didn't just get my body, you got me. You're married to me. It all came together. It was about the person, not what the person could produce. Now to say, I want sex with you, I want intimacy with you, but I don't want to have to lose my independence, is another way of saying, sex becomes a commodity and my relationship with you becomes one of a consumer vendor. But here's the most interesting thing. It also affects the church, and this is where marketing has become a hot issue in the church.

In the past, if you were a Christian, you were a member of a local church, and your local church was a member of a historic tradition. So, for example, you're a member, let's say, of a Presbyterian church.

And that Presbyterian church had a shape. It had a tradition. And down through the ages, Presbyterians pushed certain things, and they had certain emphases, and you were part of that community. So you're part not only of a kind of, you know, a geographical community here, you're also part of a historic community going back. Now, if you would move, and of course, in the older days, you didn't move as much, but if you were moved to a new city, you went to a Presbyterian church. Why? Because you were part of that community.

Let's just say your Presbyterian church is actually kind of dorky and dumpy and not very interesting, but the Methodist church is terrific and the Baptist church is terrific. But you're a Presbyterian because you're part of that community, and you want to make the Presbyterian church better. There's a commitment to place, and there's a commitment to people, and there's a commitment to history and that sort of thing. We don't do that anymore. I'm a minister, but frankly, I'm sure that if I wasn't, I wouldn't do it anymore.

Now, you come to town and you go to the church with the best music, the best preaching, the thing that meets your needs. That's what you go. That's what you do. Why? Because we've actually, here's what's starting to happen. To a great degree, the teaching of the church, the music of the church, the ministries of the church have become commodities. And you're relating to it like a consumer. And that's the reason why, for example, a person will go to a church as long as you like the preacher. The minute the preacher goes, you jump to another church. Or you go to two churches.

I like the teaching over here, but I like the music over here. Now, I'm not trying to make anybody feel guilty, since probably every one of you is in this boat, and I know that I am to some degree, but do you know what's happened? You have become part of a process. And to a great degree, marketing has contributed to it, because if I put up a poster saying, come to Redeemer Presbyterian Church, and I target the poster, I target the poster to yuppies. Remember what yuppies were? Does anybody remember that word?

In other words, you see on the poster people like yourself or people you hope you would be like or people that you'd like to network with. And you say, wow, I want to go to a church like that. Then it enhances the way in which we move about into our churches and relate to our churches as consumers, staying in them as long as the individual needs are being met.

It's estimated that most of us spend half of our waking hours at work. How does the wisdom of the Bible apply to our careers? In other words, how can our work connect with God's work? And how can our vocations be more missional?

In his book, Every Good Endeavor, Tim Keller draws from decades of teaching on vocation and calling to show you how to find true joy in your work as you serve God and others. The book offers surprising insights into how a Christian perspective on work can serve as the foundation for a thriving career and a balanced personal life.

Every good endeavor is our thank you for your gift to help Gospel in Life share Christ's love with more people around the world. Just visit gospelinlife.com slash give. That's gospelinlife.com slash give. Now, here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. Now, for example, let me just say a couple things about this before concluding and summarizing.

I don't know what to say other than if you've never heard of this, if you've never had this presented to you, that this is a process that's going on that actually is hurting families. It's hurting marriages. It's hurting churches. It's making people incredibly lonely. In the past, people were committed to place and community, and now they're simply committed to their own needs and accruing value and maximizing individual happiness.

And you stay in relationships and communities as long as it's helping you, and then you get out. Have you ever seen it laid out like that? If you haven't, as a Christian, you have to realize that that's not good.

If you weren't a Christian, you could say, what's the big deal? Well, it's not part of God's story. God's story is fall, sin, was moving from the Trinity, moving from Trinity community, moving from community into selfishness and individual selfishness and using other people. And God is healing the universe by putting us back into communities where we're supposed to be caring for other people and putting their needs ahead of ours. That's what love is.

And therefore you see that to a great degree there's a lot that's bad in there. Now fortunately, and I think God is using this in common grace, it's also been good to some degree because there's a lot of prejudice. There's class prejudice. There's racial prejudice. And to some degree the individualism that has come into our society has been good for some people. Nevertheless, overall it's not good for human society, period. And you don't want to be part of that without at least reflecting on

is what I'm doing right now with my marketing skills, getting people to relate to places, communities, to the church as a consumer, rather than actually appealing to their need for community, their need to be part of a group in which the community, the family, is more important than my individual needs. So you have to be careful about that. Now, for example, with Redeemer, whenever people talk about marketing,

I'm always in a little bit of a bind. There are some people who marketing and being a consumer is such an incredible boogeyman that they would say, don't give people contemporary music in the evening and classical music in the morning because you're just encouraging consumption.

being consumers. And to a certain degree, it's fair to say that because the way the church works is you come and you become part of the church and you let it shape you. If you have a church that actually fits your individual needs perfectly, then it kind of defeats the purpose. Because one of the purposes of the church is to learn, is to come into the church and be shaped by the church.

and to have your aesthetic sense, and to have your theological acumen, and your worldview, and your relationships with other people shaped by the church. And to do that, you have to come in and be committed to it, even when things aren't going that well. And yet, the fact is, marketing and targeting is unavoidable. The minute I write a sermon and choose an illustration, I'm moving towards some people and away from others.

If I use football illustrations, I'm moving toward some people and away from other people. If I quote Nietzsche and Marx, I'm moving toward some people and other people I'm leaving behind. I can't speak. I can't open my mouth. As soon as I decide to preach in English, that means more than half of New York City is basically being disinvited. I'm targeting people. You can't avoid targeting people.

And if you think you're not targeting people, then you're just targeting people unconsciously. I've had plenty of ministers who tell me, I just preach the gospel. I don't try to... I'm very self-consciously looking at Manhattan. It's a bunch of young professionals, and I'm saying, how do I make sure I contextualize the preaching, the shape of the church to a great degree, to professionals in Manhattan? I've gotten criticism for that. People say, oh, no, you should just preach the gospel. Because when you just preach the gospel...

As soon as you choose your illustrations, choose your language, choose the level of emotional intensity in the service, choose the music, you are targeting people, but maybe you're just doing it unconsciously. So if you don't target people very, very consciously, you're targeting them unconsciously. And in that sense, everybody's into marketing because communication to a great degree is marketing. On the other hand, I have not done advertising for Redeemer. Some people have noticed that.

Not a bit of it. There's no advertising. Why? I want you to find Redeemer through relationship. Now, some people, by the way, I've heard it's called viral advertising. Isn't that right? And viral advertising is word of mouth, and that's fine.

And by the way, I'd like to enhance that. But here's the thing. If I go on the radio, if I go on television, so some person in Staten Island or the bowels of New Jersey says, well, that's better preacher than my preacher. I cry when he preaches. I want to cry more often. So they get in the car and they come on in. Of course, they can't be in a small group. They can't be discipled. They've traveled an hour to come to church. And they're consumers.

They don't have a relationship. They're not part of a community. They came because I was better than their pastor in the bowels of New Jersey. It's no good. It ain't no good at all. And therefore, what you really need to do is I say I want people who, when they walk in the door, to as much as possible – now, this is impossible because people move to New York and they hear about it. As much as possible, people should walk in the door because a friend brought them. One of the advantages of not having a building yet –

is you've got to find it usually through a friend. And if a friend brings you, then there's automatic follow-up. If the person's not a Christian, there's automatic follow-up. It means that to some degree you're coming through because of a relationship, not just because of a felt need, not just because of that, and therefore there's something else going on there. There's all sorts of reasons why we have tried to resist marketing the church and yet at the same time recognize that marketing is a critical part of everything I do.

I can't preach without marketing. I can't get the word out to people about an event like this without marketing. I ought to market. But you see, I want to market inside God's story. I want to be concerned about commodification. I want to be concerned about the things that are going on in the world that I don't want to, with our marketing, enhance. So in the end, it's not all that easy to integrate marketing.

your work into the big story. But as marketers, actually, it's not easy. On the other hand, I think it's excitingly sophisticated and difficult. I mean, it's not just a matter of being honest. So I'm a Christian and I'm in marketing. And the way I shape my marketing with my Christianity is I'm honest. It's not enough. Not enough. Okay. We have time for questions, I understand.

My question might be sort of more related to my own personal circumstances, but I work in beauty PR, and my job is selling cosmetics to beauty editors so that they would cover it in their magazines. And after hearing what you said, it very much makes me feel that maybe I should quit my job tomorrow. Explain why. Why do you think that's not...

Well, I mean, I think I've heard from different people that God does put Christians in different places. I am, as far as I know, the only Christian in my company. And it's been very tough in that regards. But I think it's just one of those things where it's just a constant struggle for me to figure out whether or not I should be there or I shouldn't be there. My question is, I guess...

Can you maybe clarify or provide sort of more... Details. Yes. Number one, don't quit tomorrow under any circumstances. Number two, let's make a distinction. I think we all agree that heroin as a product is bad for people. But let's suggest that grooming and beauty isn't necessarily a bad product, but how you market it, what you're appealing to, very often is not good. In other words, I mean, for example...

I mean, I shouldn't be talking about this, but I mean, obviously, I think all of us are very grateful for the invention of the comb. Which was like one of the original, I mean, it's like the invention of the wheel. It was a beauty product. Why do we do it? Why comb our hair? I mean, I'm all for it. Actually, I had a... Elizabeth Elliot...

Who is a wonderful speaker, and she was a teacher of mine at Gordon-Conwell, said the basis for, you know, he says, when you comb your hair, you are acting out Genesis 1, 1, 2, 3.

The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved across and brought order out of chaos. And so every time I comb my hair, and I'm just being a good steward of my body, the cleanliness, the order, being a steward of my appearance, all that is actually witnessing to something. It really is. So one of the things you have to start off with, and I was not...

I know it's funny to say it, but you have to keep in mind that combs are a beauty product, and...

So there's all sorts of need for it. The question is, how are you marketing? And we all know that a lot of beauty products are marketed to women's insecurities, huge insecurities. So it's a question of how you're doing. If you're in a company that is forcing you to appeal to certain things in people's hearts that God doesn't want you to appeal to, doesn't want you to be stirring up, wants you to actually be calming down, then you should go to another company. But you don't have to be out of the beauty business altogether at all. Does that help a bit? Yes, very much so. Thank you. Thank you.

Why is it that redemptive storytelling, this goes beyond marketing, but the power of story itself, why is it that redemptive storytelling has become a lost art for the church?

And when you say that we must confront the church so that it can change us, at what point must we begin to change the church? When did the church neglect the arts to such an extent that we have to re-engender this kind of discussion, which is, this is prophetically timely. It's wonderful that we can take another look at these ideas and then apply them to our crafts. Many of us are in fields that we don't particularly like or enjoy, but...

We're applying ourselves to something that allows us to remain in the city, remain in the context where there's an opportunity for social and cultural and community change. I think we do have to be careful. I think that an awful lot of the products seem trivial. Like you said, making beauty products, how does that? I try to show you that if you do a little theological reflection,

like Betty Elliot helped me do years ago, you can actually re-energize your enthusiasm for what you're producing. You say, I'm producing breakfast cereal for children. Well, I'm not going to go into everything. But you might want to sit down with a couple of people and to think about the fact that most of these things are good. Most of these things are very good. You don't have to be marketing Christian films by Mel Gibson to feel like you're doing something.

You know, beauty products is also a way, it's also a sign of the kingdom. It can be. It's how you market them. And when you say a lot of us are in, you know, businesses that we don't particularly like, I would love to spend some time helping people see the redemptive nature, how what they're doing fits in with the story. And I think probably a lot of you might need a little help on that. Partly because most of the church, and this does get into what you're saying, I think, Gordon,

Most of the church is dualistic, and dualistic means that it separates the sacred from the profane. And so if you're really, really going to be serving the Lord, you need to go into full-time Christian work and share the gospel on the beaches of Florida on spring break. Otherwise, you're just a banker or you're just a marketer, and that's all right as long as you tithe to those of us who are really doing God's work. And

That dualism has made a lot of you just, you know, gives you inferiority complexes about what you're doing. And I don't think you should. That's all. I really do think there's a lot of ways of seeing that. And now, that's coming close to what you're saying. The dualism is one of the reasons why...

The Christian churches don't think of art, the arts, very favorably. They think of preaching and maybe the music to set up the preaching, and that's about it. Now, is that getting close to what you're talking about? Yeah. Okay, other questions? Yes, sir. Do you think Jesus was a socialist or a free marketer? I mean, the early church, of course, was very socialist in a certain context. Yeah.

And that they shared, you know, that when people needed something, they'd sell a piece of property and feed everybody else. However, you look at the United States, and it was founded largely on Christian principles as a free market society. And there's been a lot of benefit from that. But it's also created a lot of selfishness in a lot of ways. I suggest...

Actually, it's not a hard read, but it's also not a fast read either. Craig Blomberg wrote a book which is almost unique. It's called Neither Riches Nor Poverty.

And what it does is it goes through, and here's what's unique about it, it goes through every book of the Bible, basically every section. It goes through the Law of Moses and the history and the Psalms. It goes through every part of the Bible and says, what is the attitude toward wealth creation and money and possessions in this world?

section of the Bible. And then at the end, he puts it all together, and it's fascinating. And what he says is the reason why the Bible's view on these things does not fit in to a very decent spectrum between capital, you know, laissez-faire capitalism and socialism is because if you're a capitalist, a secular capitalist, really trusts the free market,

to basically do the best thing for human society. And the socialists really trust government to be more reliable for the needs of human beings than the free market. And the Bible doesn't trust either.

And because it doesn't trust either, it just doesn't fit in there. It just doesn't. And he says, the Bible does not trust market forces or sort of more totalitarian governments, which is what you have to do to be a socialist. You just have to create a lot more power for the state. And when I finished reading the book, they said, you know,

He said it just doesn't fit in the spectrum very well. And if you're a Christian, it means sometimes you're going to be, you know, you're probably doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be in the middle because even though you're going to tend to the middle to some degree, because you're going to see the naivete and the reductionism of both socialism and laissez-faire capitalism.

So I don't think he fits in there. I don't know how else to put it. But, I mean, for example, in the Old Testament, you've got this thing called private property. Thou shalt not steal. So that's the end of real communism and socialism. It technically says that there is no such thing as private property. You go over to the other end, of course, and there's an enormous amount of discussion in the Bible about the danger of wealth. It's almost like it's spiritually radioactive. It's just not seen nearly as positively as...

It has seen, you know, by conservative economists as a kind of benign market forces are seen as a benign or actually a positive force. So that's my answer is it's complicated. That's really and I would stick with that. Good.

These are all legitimate questions. Next. Hi. Hi. As I think about how faith shapes your work and things, the one thing I think about is proselytizing at work. I'm sorry, I forgot your – I didn't catch your name. But when our beautician, for instance, is in a place of – the only Christian in the place, how does that enter in? And are we called upon – does that give us a redeeming –

to be in a place that may not be the best fit in terms of how they market or things like that. Well, that's good. Okay. That's a good question. I would, it could be a consolation. I mean, if it's just the pits, if it's a, if it's a pits of a job and you're really looking to, you say, I can't do this all my life or I'll just feel like I'm not participating in God's story while you're there. You have to be careful because while you're there, sometimes you might actually push a little too much to try to get some silver lining in this cloud. Yeah.

And if you feel like I'm just not producing a product, I'm not doing something that's really all that helpful to people, you can sort of try almost too hard to say, but I'm sharing my faith at work. And, you know, you still could alienate people because people, you can't, people's, you know, I'm a Calvinist. You know what that means? I think that people's doors are locked from the inside.

And you can push on them, but if they're not open, you just can't push. You can't think that your eloquence or your persistence is going to open them up. So just beware of that. But yes, of course, that's part of what it means to be a Christian on the job is hopefully your integrity and your tough-mindedness, your competence, and yet your kindness will...

stick out enough that what you say about Christianity will have some credibility. If, for example, you're in a kind of spiritual growth lull,

and you actually have lost your temper and you haven't done a very good job, then you may not want to push. You may not be the best ensign for the gospel. And so if the Lord opens the door, fine. The Lord opens the door, fine. But you might say, you know, it's hard to live down a reputation, and I haven't been the best Christian right here, and maybe I shouldn't. If God opens the door, fine, but I'm not going to push and push and push. So yes, but with those caveats. Thank you.

Yes, come on. Sorry. It's often said that there are no honest salesmen. So I guess my question is in marketing a lot of times or sometimes you don't tell the whole truth or you have to paint the truth as rosier than it really is. And that's my struggle as being in a marketing position. So I just want to seek your views on that, how to deal with it and –

Well, now, Catherine's right in saying that I'm selling every Sunday. I mean, that sounds so crass. We don't want to talk about it. But the point is, I don't talk about hell every Sunday. Why not? Are you trying to hide from the customer? Well...

I'm careful. Or put it another way. If you believe in what you're, if you think that what you're giving people, again, I know from a Christian point of view, especially in the kind of churches you've been part of, if you sell breakfast cereal, it doesn't seem like you're really working for Jesus. And there's nothing wrong with selling food. Food is wonderful. It's my favorite dish.

But I'm saying if you believe in what you're seeking to market and produce, and you know that people might have inordinate fears, or if they hear this because of their prejudices, they might not stick around to hear this. There's nothing wrong with saying things in a certain order. I'm still trying to persuade people.

See, as a persuader and as a communicator, I know exactly what you're talking about. But I do think I need to say things in a certain order. The biblical view of sex, on the one hand, is actually incredibly positive, as you know.

You can take people to the Song of Solomon and then give literal translations, and it'll raise the hair on the back of the listener's neck because it's so positive and graphic about married sexual love. On the other hand, what the Bible says about sex is incredibly moral and strict. It's very, very simple. No sex outside marriage. Period. No exceptions. Now, if I was going to talk about what the Bible said about sex to men,

Immigrant families from Asia, from India, from Latin America, and let's just say they're not Christian, but they would be very, very conservative about sex. I would probably start with that side and then talk about the fact that because, however, we're not self-righteous, pharisaical, and prudish either because sex is a beautiful thing.

On the other hand, if I'm working with young postmodern teenagers in New York City and I'm trying to get them into the biblical sex ethic, I'll probably start with a song of Solomon and I'll gross them out. I will show them that I'm no prude and the Bible's not prudish and I'll kind of overdo what they do and then move to the other side. Now, is that selling? Yes. That's communication. What you have to do is, generally speaking, communication with integrity. You have to enter somebody's worldview.

but then challenge it. To enter it, you have to agree with him. You have to say, have you ever noticed, for example, how often I quote people that I'm pretty sure have a lot of credibility in New York, and, you know, why don't I just tell them the Bible? Well, a lot of the people don't, they don't trust the Bible. So I'll say Romans 8 says this, but Martin Luther King Jr. says this too. And Kierkegaard says this too. Now, you know, they went to college, and even though nobody can understand Kierkegaard, they know that he's important.

And Martin Luther King Jr. is a saint, at least in New York City, not some other places in the country. And so, well, why don't I just preach Romans 8? It's truth. It's God's word. Well, what I'm doing is I'm entering their worldview. And I'm showing them other things that they already believe and how this lines up. So to start with, I actually have to show them, I have to gain credibility and gain plausibility by agreeing with them

But at a certain point, I do also, to be honest, I have to challenge the worldview. I have to show where what I'm telling you might make you change your mind or it's going to challenge a few of your perceptions. Now, also in sales, you have to do that too because very often you have to say, I know you may not think something like this would be good, but it is. So you enter and then you challenge. If you only enter and never challenge, you are a liar.

If, on the other hand, you challenge right up front, they'll never listen to you. For example, if a person only knows German and I say, well, I'm not going to speak German to them. I'm going to speak English because that's who I am.

Why not speak German? Well, I'm not very good at German. All right, you're entering, but eventually you have to challenge. In other words, if you don't enter at all, they won't even listen to you. If you only enter and don't challenge, then you're a liar. But the balance, where have I stayed at it too long? That's where your conscience will bother you at times. And you'll say, well, maybe I soft-pedaled it. You know,

Right, but over in marketing, a lot of times you don't tell the bad side of things. You know what I mean? Like you don't show the other side of the balance. I mean, at least not in the – Yeah. So how – I guess my struggle is that like how do we give a balanced view to the consumer or the customer? If you're going – I think it might help you as a marketer to be more honest than –

You know, your seller, I mean, the buyer might be shocked if you're that honest. And so I should tell you some of the downsides. And they've never heard any of the other salespeople do that. It might actually gain credibility. You might even say, listen, you know, alternate products have their downsides too. I want to be honest about the downsides here so that you know I'm telling you the truth about why I still think you should buy this product. So, I mean...

So what I guess my experience is, is to be, be more honest maybe than you're used to being. Right. I, I guess my challenge is what if I believe in the product, but I'm in the company that does not believe in telling the downside. You know what I mean? Like the approach, the marketing approach of the company is no saying the downside. I'm glad you brought this up because actually I, when I was talking with Catherine, I wanted to say this, I should be saying this across the board. I think,

You obviously cannot violate your conscience. But when you're a younger person and when you're newer in the field, there is a time in which you kind of need to earn your spurs. It does mean, for example, I say to actors, you know, actors would love to be in vehicles that they really feel like the message of the play is just what I want to get across. And instead, they're doing stuff that they feel like is fairly trivial or unimportant or even unimportant.

not bad but not good either. And I'll say, when you're younger, I think you should put up with more of that. You need to learn. You need to show your willingness to work inside a system. You need to be careful that you're not being too self-righteous too soon. When you get older, sometimes you look back and say, I was more rigid than I needed to be. So to guard against that is to say, all right, I'm going to kind of work with this for a while.

and learn the ropes and earn my right to be heard. But eventually, as you get older, you really need to be part of organizations where you don't feel like you're constantly butting heads over values. Okay? Thank you. Okay, a couple more. You're back. I didn't do well on the first one, so give me another chance. You've done so well. That's why I'm back. Oh, that's so nice.

But you've talked about Redeemer being Presbyterian. I didn't hear that. Sorry. Being Presbyterian. And I wanted to ask a question about denominations since that's sort of brands and sort of hope it fits into this evening. But I never understood really what is actually the value of denominations within the Christian faith. What do they really mean and what's their justification? Great question. By the way, first of all,

We lifted up the word Presbyterian. And I know this is a marketing, not a move, but it was, well, it was a marketing move.

We believe that when we started a church in New York City, and by the way, years and years, no one was starting churches in New York City. Nobody started a church in Manhattan for several years before we were there. And for at least 10 to 12 years, I looked, nobody started a new church. So the idea of starting new churches, so we were afraid we were going to be read as some kind of strange cult. And so we decided Catholic, Episcopalian, and Presbyterian were identifiable churches.

non-cultic, traditional Christian names to New Yorkers. See, most New Yorkers, as you know, by the way, most New Yorkers are Jewish or Catholic.

or mainlines, Episcopal or Presbyterian. And basically the Manhattanites, the longtime Manhattanites, just didn't know of any of these other... If you called yourself a community church or anything else practically, what is that? So we actually put the word Presbyterian up there because, first of all, we are. So it was truth in advertising. But we pushed it because the word Presbyterian meant, we thought, to Manhattanites, not a cult. LAUGHTER

but traditions are very important. And you can't be part of a tradition without being part of the denomination, usually. So I think they're very valuable.

Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you were encouraged by it and that it helps you apply the wisdom of God's Word to your life. For more resources from Tim Keller, visit gospelandlife.com. There, you can also subscribe to the Gospel in Life newsletter to receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other helpful resources. Again, it's all at gospelandlife.com. You can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter.

Today's talk was recorded in 2005. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.