HOW SHREWD ARE WE?
Congregational Participation Question: How would you define the word “shrewd”? Can you think of something that you or someone else did that would qualify to be called “shrewd?”
Here are some definitions from the dictionaries:
Cambridge:
possessing or based on clear understanding and good judgment of a situation, resulting in an advantage
He was shrewd enough not to take the job when there was the possibility of getting a better one a few months later.
It was shrewd of you to make that investment.
She is a shrewd politician who wants to avoid offending the electorate unnecessarily.
She has a reputation for shrewd management decisions.
It was a shrewd move to buy your house just before property prices started to rise.
She has a shrewd eye for publicity and rarely misses an opportunity to appear in the media.
Webster’s:
1: marked by practical hardheaded intelligence; "a smart businessman"; "an astute tenant always reads the small print in a lease"; "he was too shrewd to go along with them on a road that could lead only to their overthrow" [syn: {astute}, {sharp}]
2: used of persons; "the most calculating and selfish men in the community" [syn: {calculating}, {calculative}, {conniving}, {scheming}]
Related Words: canny, crafty, foxy, ingenious, slick, sly, tidy; clever, intelligent, knowing, quick-witted, smart; polite, smooth; judicious, prudent, sensible, wise; penetrating, piercing, probing; acute, keen, sharp; farsighted, foresighted
Contrasted Words green, naive, simple, soft; foolable, gullible, slow
Keep this meaning of the word “shrewd” in mind as you hear the story found in Luke 16:1-8 once again.
An employer discovers that one of his managers has been cheating him and defrauding his business. The boss calls Wile E. Coyote to his office and tells him to clean out his desk and produce his account records.
The account manager considers his options. He knows that he is too old to get another job that pays as well. The thought of manual labour brings blisters to his hands. Until now the most demanding physical thing he had ever done was moving his golf clubs from the garage to the Mercedes ML 430 and back from the Mercedes into the garage. Unemployment insurance will not pay all his bills and a lawyer will only tie things up for months. So, he arranges a lunch appointment at an expensive restaurant with his main accounts to do some wheeling and dealing.
During his last meal on his company’s credit card, he discusses each client’s accounts. He tells them that since they have been such good customers he is offering them a rebate on their previous purchases to be credited to their account. They sign the papers, shake hands, and return to their respective office thinking that the account manager is a wonderful man.
Later that afternoon, the account manager brings his books to his boss’s office. The boss takes one look at the books, smells something, stands up and goes to the back room. “Oh, oh” thinks Wile E. “Here it comes. He’s going to come back with a security guard and have me arrested.” But, instead, the boss comes back with an envelope and a piece of clothing. “You’re fired. Here’s your severance. But before you leave, try this on for size.” As he started tying the strings around his manager’s waist, the boss said: “Wile E. Coyote, you’re a dirty, rotten scoundrel, but you’re a shrewd one. I really admire the way you used my money to buy yourself some “fire-ing insurance” with my top clients. Please accept this chef’s apron as a token of my admiration for the way you cooked my books. Now get the heaven out of my building and keep on cooking.”
That is Jesus’ definition of “shrewd”. Before we can recover from the shock of hearing the boss praise the dishonest manager for his ingenuity, here comes the aftershock: “The people of this world are much more shrewd in handling their affairs than the people who belong to the light.” He just punched us in the face with that remark. He says that he wants us to be at least as shrewd as Wile E. Coyote. Not dishonest. But shrewd.
Here we’ve been focussing on being prude; but he wants us to be shrewd.
We thought we just had to be nice; he says we also need to be wise.
We were caught up in teaming and dreaming; he says we also need to be scheming.
We’d been told that being straight-laced was the trick; he says try being slick.
As we read in Peterson’s translation of the New Testament known as "The Message": "Now here’s the surprise: The master praised the crooked manager! Why? Because he knew how to look after himself. Streetwise people are smarter ... than law-abiding citizens. They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits. I want you to be smart in the same way--but for what is RIGHT--using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you’ll live, really live, and not complacently just get by on good behaviour."
Now you know why this parable, this story has been giving preachers fits down through the ages! It took more than 10 years of preaching before I decided to touch it with a twenty-foot pole. Jesus wants us to learn something straight from a crook.
Hey, church, can you handle his challenge and ask the question: “HOW SHREWD ARE WE?” In the way we live out our Christian faith as individuals? And as a church community? Are the people who belong to the light outsmarting the people who belong to the world? Or being outsmarted by them? Are the people who belong to the light open to learning from the people who belong to the world, those who have already showed us how to be “shrewd”?
Especially when we are at a crisis point like Wile E. Coyote was, in Jesus’ story? Do we stay put? Stand pat? Are we crippled by fear? Paralysed by the shock? Isn’t it true that, when faced with a crisis, God’s chosen people have often become God’s frozen people who did not act decisively, as a matter of fact, often did nothing at all?
I am proud to be part of a congregation that realized that we were stagnant, we were without a vision that led us, we had no unifying mission that stretched us and decided to do something about it by engaging congregational life consultants Clair Woodbury and Joyce Madsen to come and work with us. In doing so, we did something that churches are reluctant to do that businesses do routinely. The people who belong to the world learnt something from the people who belong to the world. Guess what, we were sh..sh..sh..SHREWD. Praise God!
In all fairness that process has been the most uplifting thing to happen around here in recent years as well as the most upsetting thing to happen around here in recent years. Because, it changed our thinking about who we are and what we are meant to do as the church. When our thoughts change, so do our words and our actions–every time!
Those of you who attended the sessions will recall that Joyce often made connections between what churches do and what businesses do–after all, she teaches marketing at the University of Alberta and helps people put business plans together! You will remember Clair talking about his experience with Moore’s and what we could learn from them.
What we learn from them is not how to run the church like a business, but how we can use the techniques and strategies of the business world to improve our Christian witness as the body of Christ, as the beacon of light we call the church.
Bill Hybels is the senior pastor of the 12,000-plus member, Willow Creek Community Church located in Northwest-suburban Chicago. When Hybels decided to start a church, rather than "set-up shop" and faithfully preach the Word of God, he instead took survey teams through the community, asking people why they didn’t regularly attend a church. According to Hybels, the survey revealed that people: "(1) didn’t like being bugged for money; (2) found church boring, predictable, and routine; (3) didn’t think that the church was relevant to their lives; and (4) always left church feeling guilty (the Christian message too negative with ’sin,’ etc.)."
Hybels’ solution was to "program our Sunday morning service to non-believers, and program our service to believers on another day or evening." By this means, Hybels hoped the newcomers would "feel welcome, unthreatened, and entertained." Hybels states that it is absolutely essential that the "unchurched Harry’s and Mary’s" be introduced to a "creative, introductory level, positive, Bible-centered church experience on a Sunday morning ... a place designed for [the unbeliever]." Hybels states that his people "have put a lot of time and thought into what non-churched people want from a Sunday morning service. And we have concluded that they basically want four things: (1) anonymity; (2) truth presented at an introductory level; (3) time to ’make a decision;’ and (4) excellence in programming, creativity, humor, contempo-rary [worship], relevancy, etc."
He continues to say: "The personal [evangelism] goes on out in the marketplace, and on Sundays we continue and supplement the personal efforts by helping people as we give them a creative service to bring people who are in the process of deciding about a relationship with Jesus Christ.”
Bill Hybels took a page right out of the Marketing Research Manual used by businesses and made it work for the people who belong to the light. It may not surprise you to hear that the words I read to you just now came from a web site, authored by another Christian, who slams Hybels’ methods as being “humanistic.” Of course, it is, dummy! He learnt from the people who belong to the world. He was being SHREWD like Jesus wanted him to be and today thousands of people who might have never stepped into a church have, and through them thousands more will experience the power of Jesus Christ to transform lives. HOW SHREWD ARE WE?
The dishonest manager in Jesus’ story acted decisively and creatively in coming up with a solution to his problem. He knew he would be fired anyway. He decided to go for broke. He decided to build some good will for himself when he was without a job and setting up a consulting agency in which he would put to good use all the valuable experience he gained working for his present boss.
Jesus is asking us: “If Wile E. Coyote would do all that he could to ensure the future of his own enterprise, how much more should we be doing to ensure the future of Jesus’ enterprise? If the people who belong to the world come up with all sort of ingenious ways for the sake of something that is only good for this life, how much more should we be doing for the sake of something that is eternal?”
When I did a search on the Internet for the word “shrewd” here is the first link that popped up: Kids are Target of Pokemon’s Shrewd Marketing Effort
On any given Saturday, don’t be surprised if a visit to the nearest Toys“R”Us has you stumbling on thousands of children trading cards and exchanging tips about Pokemon, the hottest toy phenomenon of the year. At weekly Toys“R”Us Pokemon Leagues children meet to learn, play and teach others about the new game from Japan. The leagues are attracting 35,000 to 45,000 children to their local stores each week. The tournaments are so popular that some stores are already putting kids on waiting lists. The meetings are part of a carefully orchestrated marketing plan surrounding a new craze that is thrilling kids, stripping dollars for their parents’ wallets and raking in huge revenues for a handful of toy companies. For the year, total world sales of Pokemon products will reach around $6 billion.
Kids’ tastes are notoriously fickle, so to make sure this fad doesn’t follow the Cabbage Patch Kids and fizzle out from kids’ imaginations, 4Kids has been following a very deliberate marketing approach. The company plans to release new products in the coming year to make sure that Pokemon has staying power, according to Carlin West, senior vice president of marketing at the company. A key effort is to make all the different products interact. Watching the TV show or the movie, kids get tips on how to play the computer game. Kids are also encouraged to collect more and more cards featuring the different characters included in the game (the game’s catch phrase is “Gotta catch ’em all!”). The idea is keep them buying, playing and interested in the game and its related products.
Nintendo is focusing its marketing on older children in order to appeal to younger ones.
The thinking is that young kids want to buy products designed for older kids, so by marketing Pokemon to a young audience the company will alienate older ones. But if the product is marketed to older kids, both young and old will be interested.”
Pokemon may have seemed like a kids’ craze that just caught on, but you can tell that there was a serious marketing strategy behind it. It was SHREWD indeed.
HOW SHREWD ARE WE in marketing the gospel of Jesus Christ? Especially as the church? Yes, ads in the Leader-Post help. Yes, some folks let their fingers do the walking and find us in the Yellow Pages. Yes, Sunday Night Live helps. Yes, Music for Many brings us publicity. Yes, the web page attracts surfers. But, have we been missing out on the most effective and least inexpensive strategy of them all?
A Lutheran colleague writes: “I am always amused at how seriously some church members take their politics around election time. Gung ho, they can devote hundreds of hours ringing doorbells or making phone calls for their political party and its candidates. Yet they wouldn’t walk next door to invite a neighbour to attend church with them.”
A classmate of mine, Ross Bartlett is doing something this morning with the congrega-tion of St.Matthew’s United in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Here is how he introduces it:
One thing this generation does well is self-promote. Advertise. Get the story out. We can be fairly confident that advertising works because shrewd companies spend hundreds and hundreds of millions on it annually. But you know what the best advertising is don’t you? Word of mouth. A good word is worth a thousand ads. A bad word can kill a product stone dead! And in word of mouth, the church can be as shrewd (astute) as any corporation dealing with the children of this generation. We can’t go head to head with Microsoft or the car companies or the airlines. It’s not a question of the quality or relevance of the "product" being advertised. It’s a matter of cash. But word of mouth - we’ve got them beat, hands down. We have what, some 150 potential advertisers sitting right here today. Except for guests, you’ve returned here because you find something meaningful here. Think about what that is. You are sitting on a gold mine that someone else desperately wants to know about. And they trust you. They trust your judgement. It may be a relative, a neighbour, a colleague, a friend.
Please take out the cards you received at the beginning of the sermon. I’ve already asked God to do this. So, right now, each of you will think of at least three people who are not associated with any congregation. No sheep-stealing allowed. I want you to write those names down. I want you to pray for those people. I want you to invite them to worship next Sunday. We don’t hesitate to commend a mechanic, a dentist or a special savings on gasoline. Why are we so reluctant to commend our church? 70% of all those who join a congregation like ours acknowledge that they first came at the invitation of someone they trusted.”
There is a rule of thumb in the sales world. It is called the rule of thirds. A third of the people you call will be receptive. Of the people who are receptive, a third will “buy.” If everyone here invited 3 people that would be 450. If a third of them were receptive, that would be 150. If a third of them came, we would have 50 new faces–if they were all singles. What if a third were singles, a third couples, a third families with more than 2 people? That would be 96 new men, women and children. You can do it, folks. We can do it together. Ross is giving his people till October 14. I believe we can go one better. We are not going to waste any time. We are doing it right now. Today.
And Jesus will smile because this church would start living up to its mission statement to be “an inviting, INVITING church that serves Jesus Christ with joy.” And, in so doing, we would also be accepting his challenge to be SHREWD, won’t we?
Thanks be to God. AMEN.
