The American Evangelical Church is the AMWAY Church

There is something about the modern evangelical Christian movement – or at least the way that the American Church lives out Christianity – that troubles me. There are times that the Church reminds me of AMWAY (I know they changed their name to Quixtar after lawsuits). AMWAY is a pyramid scheme marketing movement. It is as flim-flam as junk bond trading and the internet businesses that own no real property. AMWAY sells the idea that one can make “a great extra or primary income” by selling AMWAY products. In reality that one can only make the income if he sells the “idea of making the income” to another person. The real income is made up by networking with people and selling them the idea and charging basic startup fees.

There is no real value to AMWAY as a company other than the products it can push one or two times to new people, the products that its “managers” buy or the products that are a part of the starter kit that people must buy to become a “manager.” Very few people do AMWAY for any period of time. The top one percent really makes some money (see reference to Dateline reports). A little larger percent make some money but dollar for dollar they make pennies per hour invested. The greatest percent create the revenue for the few by purchasing starter items and products for the short time they are involved. In order to keep revenue up, the few keep pumping up the many and constantly marketing the masses with new “hot ideas” and different spins on the same old system.

If people really made money at AMWAY, then sales people wouldn’t have to push so hard and sell people on the idea of selling the idea and products to others. If AMWAY’s products were so good then they would own stores like Wal-mart. AMWAY only works for the select few. AMWAY only moves products to recruit people. They know that very few “managers” (people recruited to ‘sell’ products but primarily to become the network from which their ‘up line manager’ finds other suckers like them to sell the idea of AMWAY to so that he can get to their friends and so on) will ever make any real money. They also know that their cut of any money made is so great that they can’t lose. As I said at the beginning, the sole goal of AMWAY is to keep the ball rolling. Take an old idea,  package it, try to get people involved in it, get them to sell the idea to others and then repackage the idea after everyone realizes it is a scam and so on.

So why does the modern evangelical Christian movement remind me of AMWAY? Let’s take for example the Christian publication market as it markets the interactions of authors and leaders. I noticed that another of the huge, mega, training churches was putting out another annual conference of Volunteerism. The conference includes their “latest book” and “training videos” all for the low price of thousands of dollars. “Thousands of dollars?” you say.  “You must have read the flyer wrong; the conference was only $265. And you know that they have to cover their costs, and…” Aha! This is where my AMWAY comes in. We go to the $265 conference but if we want any of the tools or materials then we pay more. If we want to deploy the knowledge and secret system in our local church then we pay more. It will cost thousands to deploy the miracles of volunteerism in the local church as packaged by the mega church. The mega church funds their conference ministry. Some of the churches attending actually see a benefit from God’s money invested but most churches just succeed for a short time and then await a different conference or a different leader who went to a different conference. Success is always on the horizon and each new conference and publication holds the hope that the masses of unsuccessful churches and leaders will actually make it to the harvest.

Christianity is a very old faith. As a wine, it would have aged well and had plenty of years to find full body. However, in the winery of the modern evangelical movement, so many barrels seem to contain vinegar, something just short of real wine. If these ideas that are bought by hopefuls (of which only an AMWAY percent will see any results) and sold by supposed successes (has anyone checked the real data of their success – not just in numbers but in the end product) were so successful, why does the church need to “sell” them again and again? How many times can you sell the same idea to the same set of people? Is it righteous to sell a truly God idea? Where does the money go and is it good stewardship by the buyers and the sellers? Do the methods sold work in the long run? Is there a Biblical model for Christian Leaders to follow?

It seems as if the sole goal of the Church Leadership is at times to “keep the ball rolling” while in essence there is really no significant change in the Church or impact of the Church on society. I wonder if the Church Leadership could have become the AMWAY of the spiritual economy, trading in ideas that make a few leaders seem very successful while truly impacting only a few new leaders but successfully chalking up thousands and thousands of “copies sold” to leaders who will never make the idea work.

Oh, and let’s not just pick on the “sellers” in this scam – this would never work if “buyers” didn’t need to buy the idea of hope again and again.