Originally published as a featured article for Doorway Publishing

“My heart is stirred by a noble theme
as I recite my verse for the king;
my tongue is a pen of the skillful writer.” (Psalm 45:1)

“Human beings are communal and seek to communicate persuasively with one another. Rhetoric is about persuasion…and that old Roman teacher Quintilian defines the rhetor as, “The good man speaking well.” (Jerry Root)

I am the son of a salesman, a traveling salesman, a tremendously successful traveling salesman. And the motto that my father lived by was, “It is better to be a ‘closer’ than an order taker.” This means he would rather persuade a person to buy his product through a great sales pitch and masterful closing technique than have someone buy from him simply because they liked the product.

For him, persuasion was the goal, and getting a signature on a contract made his day. The satisfaction of the customer was secondary. Important, but secondary.

He would often teach me his techniques around the dinner table: “Chris, if you can get a customer to say ‘no’ you are one step closer to a sale. Because when they say ‘no’ they are actually saying they are ready to negotiate new terms.” Or this little nugget: “Make the pitch and then wait — the first person to talk loses.” He was a master at getting people to buy from him. For my dad, the sale was like the thrill of the kill for the hunter. He could always smell blood before the ‘close’.

And as his loving son, I tried following in his footsteps. I went to college to get a degree in Marketing and Communications so I too could have a successful career in the art of persuasion. But once I hit the cold-calling pavement trail in downtown Chicago, I began to realize that I was not made for sales. I hated going after the ‘close’, it began to crush my soul. Not only did I want people to buy my product because they loved my product, I felt like I was a fraud when I used different sales techniques to manipulate the buyer. I felt greasy, like a snake-oil salesman at the local gypsy carnival that rolls into town.

I came to the full awareness of my disdain for the ‘close’ when my dad joined a startup company where he was asked to head the national sales team in the United States. The product they wanted him to sell was an ill-conceived innovation that clearly had no chance for success. It was a poorly engineered wet-dry vacuum cleaner for carpet and tile that was supposed to clean up big spills and remove obvious stains. I will never forget the day he brought it home to show my me and my mom. He had us sit on the living room couch, and he began to explain how the cleaner was to be used. He poured a thick blue liquid on our white carpet, and after a rigorous ten minutes of vacuuming, the mark it left was still clearly noticeable. Like an old lady’s hair dye gone bad.

“Works great, doesn’t it?” he said with an awkward self-conscious smile. I looked at my mom and I could see in her eyes that she was not impressed. And as my dad kept trying to show all of the product’s features, we both tried not to show our embarrassment for him. 

The sales pitch wasn’t working. We were not sold. And I wondered to myself, “If you can get someone to buy a product that you know doesn’t work, what does that do to your integrity and their future trust in you?” Even though you may persuade someone at the moment, you may eventually lose them forever.

I soon made up my mind that sales was not for me. I couldn’t sell what I didn’t believe in, and even worse, I didn’t want to sell what I believed in because I hated the stench of manipulation that often went along with the act of persuasion. 

So eventually I quit the sales field, and subsequent years later I was led into the pastoral ministry. I became the pastor of a medium-sized rural church. My job was to love God by teaching his people. Simple, right? I stand behind a pulpit and declare God’s truth. But wait, as Martin Lloyd Jones the famous British preacher once said, “Preaching must always be characterized by persuasiveness. ‘We beseech you in Christ’s stead be ye reconciled to God.’ Surely the whole object of this act is to persuade people, he is trying to do something to them, to influence them.”

Does that mean the preacher must become a salesman? Is my goal to become a ‘closer’ for eternity? Yes, I believe in the product, but the stain of manipulation still remains. From my experience, and hearing the stories of people in my congregation, I began to realize many have been hurt through horrible sales techniques of the previous pastors in their lives. Ever since the turn of the century, the Gospel has been turned into a pragmatic formula, a well-designed sales pitch sold by hucksters behind a pulpit. 

You have heard it, “With your head bowed and eyes closed…I see that hand!”

Is this how Jesus did it? So I read and studied and I began to realize that Jesus told stories. He invited his listeners in to see, feel, and taste the Gospel rather than using a mere sleight of hand to get people to sign on the dotted line. He used common metaphors and idioms, he talked about wheat and tares, pigs and fattened calves, and he talked about mustard seeds and fig trees. Jesus spoke our language.

I have often asked people who they think is the greatest theologian in the New Testament. Time and time again the answer is, “Paul, the book of Romans is sheer logical and propositional brilliance!” Then I would ask, “Well, what about Jesus? As a theologian isn’t he Theos himself?” And the person I was asking would scratch their head and say, “Yeah, but he tells stories.”