Richard Branson, Haagen-Dasz, And Jesus

Quick quiz question - what do Mike Oldfield and The Stereophonics have in common? I'll give you a clue with a little fact about Richard Branson. Most of his companies are branded with the name 'Virgin', but there are 3 that aren't. His bridal wear business isn't one of them; the ones that are are Mates condoms, Storm Models, and his record company. Yes, there is a record company called Virgin; but he doesn't own that one-he sold it. And then he decided he quite liked running a record company, so he started another one.
 
So, what does that say about anything? Simply that image is important. I remember once a talk which started off saying -I'm going to talk about evangelism now, so I know what you're all thinking; Haagen-Dasz. Apparently, it was a family of Polish immigrants to the States who started it. They got a small loan and bought a shop, and they were thinking about what would make people come. They figured that if they gave it a Polish name, and gave the impression it was a traditional recipe, people would be intrigued-and after a while, word would get around and people would come because of the quality. And if you've ever heard of them, you'll know that it worked. So, what does 'Haagen-Dasz' actually mean? Absolutely nothing, they made it up. Apparently, anyway. Again, image is important.

So, what does that have to do with evangelism? And why am I writing about evangelism, when anyone who knows me well knows it isn't a subject I'm particularly interested in? To answer the second question first, I've been thinking about evangelism because we've been going a teaching series at church, and that was the most recent subject. There was a talk on Sunday, which basically said everyone should go and talk to people about Jesus; and some DVD material we studied on Wednesday which was talking about loving and serving people. It almost seemed as if that was based on a different talk, their angles were so different.

Now, I don't think all Christians have a duty to go and tell everyone they know about Him; I've mentioned this in passing before. However, one sentence in particular struck me from the talk:-we are not called to be witnesses, we are witnesses. When someone knows we are Christians, or even begins to suspect, the way they think about God will be affected by the way they see us. So, as I said, image is important. But, more importantly, the other lesson we should take from the two examples I opened with are that what we are once past the image is, if anything, even more important. I'm sure you've heard of Haagen-Dasz and you know how good it is; and the 'Virgin' label is enough to tell investors that this business will work, but without that label, he had to work harder to establish those particular businesses. And, in both cases, they were successful because they had quality and hard work to back them up.

And so it should be with us. I'll leave the last words to a meme I found online earlier today.

*For those who were still wondering, they were the first two artists signed to each of his record labels.