We have now completed our first grouping of five:

Groups of People: non-followers of Jesus

·         A non-follower is by definition someone who has not given his/her life to follow Jesus.

Group 1: The Antagonist: will negate any kind of possibility of God to fit his/her own framework of possibilities.

Group 2: The Spiritualist: believes in every kind of supernatural possibility – ghosts, energy, reincarnation, etc.

Group 3: The Disinterested: never really thought about God and spends a lot of time trying not to think about mortality, God, or the meaning of life.

Group 4: The Moralist: believes that as long as they are good and people don’t actively hurt one another then God is irrelevant (if He/She exists then they will be good enough, and if not, then the world is a good place).

Groups of People: non-followers of Jesus

·         A non-follower is by definition someone who has not given his/her life to follow Jesus.

Group 1: The Antagonist: will negate any kind of possibility of God to fit his/her own framework of possibilities.

Group 2: The Spiritualist: believes in every kind of supernatural possibility – ghosts, energy, reincarnation, etc.

Group 3: The Disinterested: never really thought about God and spends a lot of time trying not to think about mortality, God, or the meaning of life.

Groups of People: non-followers of Jesus

·         A non-follower is by definition someone who has not given his/her life to follow Jesus.

Group 1: The Antagonist: will negate any kind of possibility of God to fit his/her own framework of possibilities.

Group 2: The Spiritualist: believes in every kind of supernatural possibility – ghosts, energy, reincarnation, etc.

Group 3: The Disinterested: never really thought about God and spends a lot of time trying not to think about mortality, God, or the meaning of life.

Group 4: The Moralist: believes that as long as they are good and people don’t actively hurt one another then God is irrelevant (if He/She exists then they will be good enough, and if not, then the world is a good place).

Groups of People: non-followers of Jesus

·         A non-follower is by definition someone who has not given his/her life to follow Jesus.

Group 1: The Antagonist: will negate any kind of possibility of God to fit his/her own framework of possibilities.

Group 2: The Spiritualist: believes in every kind of supernatural possibility – ghosts, energy, reincarnation, etc.

Group 3: The Disinterested: never really thought about God and spends a lot of time trying not to think about mortality, God, or the meaning of life.

Groups of People: non-followers of Jesus

·         A non-follower is by definition someone who has not given his/her life to follow Jesus.

Group 2: The Spiritualist: believes in every kind of supernatural possibility – ghosts, energy, reincarnation, etc.

When I first met my wife, Melissa, she was a spiritualist. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in a god (little “g”), but more that she thought he or she was one part of a whole host of spiritual or supernatural experiences. Ask some people if they believe in God and they will say “no”, but ask them if they believe in ghosts they will say “yes”. In fact, there’s a whole Discovery channel show dedicated to celebrities who believe in ghosts. Melissa had cobbled together a form of believe from a variety of vague thoughts…careful not to think to thoroughly about any one of them. She had a crystal not because she thought rocks were inherently powerful, but because maybe there was something to some forms of rocks having more energy than others. She believed in reincarnation not because she was a Hindu, but because she wasn’t sure if she was herself or herself come back into time again and again.

In the introduction, I outlined several segmented groups and divided them into two broad categories. Then I posted a video outlining two principles in general strategy: (1) strategy is not inaccessibility and (2) unity is not uniformity. 

It's important to remember that the God of the Bible is a God who takes initiative (and His followers who reflect Him also take initiative). God created humanity, but humanity has since categorized itself along ethnic, socio-economic, and rate of change. What is important is that God reaches each with the same message, but with methods that are unique to those groups. Jesus didn't talk to a centurion the same way He spoke to a Pharisee. Paul had a different approach in Athens than in Corinth.

So in this sense, then, it is perfectly acceptable to recognize where different groups are and utilize different methodologies. In business terms, this isn't about advertising, but true marketing (ie. connecting with the customer in a way that is meaningful for the customer). I'll admit I'm a little uncomfortable with the business terms as they apply to a transcendent God, but truth is truth regardless of context. God longs to connect with people - but never at the price of warping His truth - and that, I think is the line that often gets crossed in Christiandom. In trying to connect with others, we try to make the Gospel message easier to swallow or harder to understand. But God allows room for neither.

Over the course of the next several posts, I'll be unpacking descriptions for different groups of people. Then, we'll look at 3 simple steps for cutting across the cacaphony of different voices to connect meaningfully.

Warning: these blogs have the same bent as my other posts - with an eye toward the spiritual. HOWEVER, one of the things that makes this series unique is the cross-over application in the world of sales and/or marketing. Granted, there are some limitations, but the similarities are too numerous to ignore. It's impossible, for example, to do any kind of segmentation without some recognition that marketing/advertising has put segmentation on steroids over the course of the last 60 years. But the reason they do it is simple: to a large extent, it works. 

I sat in my chair in our livingroom going through a folder with our family history (on my mother's side) in it. My suburban hands don't show it, but I actually come from rather hearty stock. My grandfather was a soldier and a blacksmith. My grandmother worked at everything from farming to factory sewing.

I looked at faces past and reminisced a little. It's strange, but whether I'm going through photo albums of extended family history, or just going through our own immediate family history, I'm often gripped by a strange sense of melancholy. This isn't because of time wasted. Believe it or not, I actually appreciated and savored every moment - of my children's lives, of being alive, even of the music and fashion of the day. In fact, at times my memories have soundtracks and smells associated with them because I remembered to cherish those moments. It occurs to me that I visit the past rightly - to remember, to learn, to appreciate how fleeting time actually is. But many actually live with their heads straining for the past while their feet try to move through the present.