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Writer's picturePeder Tellefsdal

Interviewing Donald Miller: What Is Christianity’s Main Value Proposition


Donald Miller, founder of StoryBrand

Donald Miller is a New York Times bestselling author, public speaker, and CEO of Business Made Simple and StoryBrand. He is also an author of personal essays and reflections about faith, God, and self-discovery. 


His book Blue Like Jazz: Non-Religious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality, a semi-autobiographical work, spent 43 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list and has sold over 1.5 million copies to date. 


As part of my book-writing process, I had the honor of interviewing him, asking him specifically about what we can learn from a marketer’s mindset when it comes to communicating the Gospel. 


The Interview

Me: Pastors, priests, and church leaders are such excellent storytellers inside the walls of the church. Why, then, are they having so much trouble attracting new members?


Donald Miller: It would take a book to answer that question. I can give you a couple stabs at it. One is that the narrative that the church is telling inside the walls of the church competes with the narrative that is being told by media outside the church. They conflict. 


And so, the channels that actually would carry those stories out into the world are not interested in carrying them because they compete with the narratives that the world has to offer. 


Those narratives are “Money will make you happy,” “Sex will make you happy,” “The reason you’re unhappy is because of political leaders,” and so on. All those narratives are completely contradictory to the narrative that the church is trying to teach. 


So that’s why the story isn’t echoing outside of the church—that’s why that’s happening. And that may be partly the reason why people are having so much trouble getting other people to come to church. 


I will say this, though: everybody is trying to solve a problem. We are attracted to movements, communities, products, and leaders if those people can articulate the problem that they solve. And then people think like, “OK, I got that problem, I’m gonna go there.” 


So, anytime you have people not buying a product, it is a sign that the product does not work or the problem that the product solves is not being articulated very well.


If you want people to come to church, you have to ask, “What problems do we solve?” Do we solve loneliness? Do we solve a lack of meaning? Do we solve “I can’t make good decisions in my life, and I don’t know how?” You have to answer that question. 

Me: Do you think Christian leaders should think more like marketers? What would that look like?


DM: Yes, they should think more like marketers. But they shouldn’t think like salespeople. What marketers do is they’re very good at understanding the value that a product has and then turning around and communicating that value to the masses. 


That, I think, is not being done super well inside the evangelical church—at least in America. You know, the value that the Gospel has is not articulated very well.


It’s much more like a competition in some sort of culture war that they’re participating in. 


Me: What is Christianity’s main value proposition?


DM: Connection with God. That’s it. We are disconnected from God, and if you want to be connected with Him, you have to do that through Christ. That would be the value proposition of the Gospel. 


With that, you get a connection with others; you get redemption from sin and a lot of other stuff. But again, the value proposition is: if you want to be connected with God, you can do it through us.


Meeting Donald Miller

I will most likely travel to Nashville in October to join the Made Simple Summit. Miller has agreed to chat more about the need to clarity the Gospel message so that people today will listen. Can't wait!


Have a great rest of the week!


All the best,

Peder

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