This summer is looking more and more exciting all the time. Just think, you'll be able to drink your Coke out of a can with surfboards and flip-flops all over it. When your allergies attack your nose, you can get your Kleenex out of a box that looks like a waffle cone. (They're hoping you won't miss last summer's watermelon wedge box.) And when the Cookie Monster in you needs to be fed, your Chips Ahoy will have - fasten your seat belt - red, white and blue chips in them...and come from a package covered with picnic-ready checkered tablecloths.
A USA Today front page headline reports, "Marketers have a summer romance with packaging." Why go to all the expense and trouble of giving your products a sum-sum-summertime look? "Marketers know shoppers can be swayed to buy a product not just because of what's inside the box or bottle, but what's on the outside. That's why package design has become a $1 trillion industry."
Maybe the people with the most important "Product" on the planet have something to learn here. That would be Christians - whose "Product" is the Message upon which eternities depend. It's the Gospel - the life-saving message that God's Son loved us enough to take our hell, so we could go to His heaven.
In a world with epidemic loneliness, Jesus offers "never leave you" love. In a world of broken and disappointing relationships, Jesus promises your one "unloseable" relationship. At a time when everything seems up for grabs, Jesus provides one unmoving anchor. With so many regrets and guilt and mistakes. Jesus forgives it all and gives a fresh start.
So why aren't people flocking to our Jesus? Why do they walk right on by the people and places and programs where they could find Him? Could it be the package? Oh, we can say, "People just don't care about Jesus these days." Maybe. But everything they're looking for is in Him. So could it be we have the world's most important "product" wrapped in a package few lost people would ever pick up?
We don't need to - we don't dare - mess with the Message. It's always relevant, always compelling - "the power of God for salvation" (Romans 1:16). But a lot of very lost people won't ever look at the "Product" because of the package we put it in. That's why Paul said he kept changing the package - never the Message - to fit the audience he wanted to reach. 'When I am with the Jews, I become one of them so that I can bring them to Christ...When I am with the Gentiles who do not have the Jewish law, I fit in with them as much as I can...When I am with those who are oppressed, I share their oppression so that I may bring them to Christ. Yes, I try to find common ground with everyone so that I might bring them to Christ" (1 Corinthians 9:20-22 - NLT).
Why should the devil have all the good packages? His product is disappointment, despair and death. But millions buy it. Why? Because he knows how to create an exciting package for a horrible product. It's time that, we as Christ's ambassadors, ask ourselves, "If I were one of the lost people I know, would I come to this? If I did, would I ever come back? Would I understand it?" Our music, our delivery systems, our subjects, our promotion, our vocabulary, the needs we address - is it for the already interested, the already rescued?
Creating a package that will reach the lost usually involves something we all dislike - change. But how can we let our fear of change be greater than our fear of losing people forever, whose only hope is to hear about our Jesus? God Himself came here and wrapped Himself in a "package" we could relate to - to save us, even if it meant losing everything.
And I can't forget that the ultimate package for the message of Jesus is me - and you, if you belong to Him. Most people who come to Christ do it because of a Christian they know. And most people who don't come to Christ don't do it because of a Christian they know. Maybe the package that needs to change is me.
People with a product that lasts a moment put a lot into getting their package right. How can we who have the "Product" that lasts forever do anything less?