Christianity and Pyramid Schemes

It's Christmas Day. I am visiting family, which I love doing, and we went to a church today to help serve food to people. Everyone was very welcoming and pleasant, Merry Christmases all around. Everyone knew each other's names and what was going on in their lives. These people seemed to have spent much time with each other developing close, intimate relationships. The only aspect of this gathering that sparked a question to my mind was when the pastor took the microphone to speak to the guests of the crowd, of which I assume he had no developed relationships(he may have, but it did not appear this way). He began to share a quick synopsis of how to accept Jesus Christ as our personal savior and welcomed us to continue eating. While I do believe that a relationship with Christ is of the greatest importance, I am in question of the manner in which we invite people to this relationship. After a meager introduction to each other, most likely not even knowing the other's name, we immediately want them to change their beliefs, habits, words, their life, of which we know nothing about.

While in search for a job, I came across an ad offering the chance to make up to $1000 a day by helping promote whatever it is this person wanted promoting. Obviously, I would love for this kind of money, so I emailed the guy in hopes of solving all my financial needs, but still very skeptical. He promptly emailed me back giving me several numbers to call to get started. These phone calls consisted of absolutely no information about a product to promote, how I could go about helping to promote it, or how I could make $1000 a day. It was a 15 minute recording of person after person testifying to how rich they had become by joining this program. After listening to all these people tell me how amazing their lives are now, I made the second phone call which consisted of how the system supposedly works and that all I had to do was come up with $3700 to get started, but of course I would make this money back within a week. By joining under this man's name, and paying him $3500, they would advise me on how to get other people to join, making money every time I was able to convince someone else to join.

One day this man called me and reviewed all this wonderful information with me again and went on to ask me if I could go take out the loan that day.

Yeah, sure thing, man. I'll go take out a loan to give YOU... trusting this stranger to help me make it all back by promoting this "system" that I know nothing about because he got 25 people to tell me it works sounded like the perfect idea. I suggested that since he would be making money because I joined with him and that he was so sure I would make all that money back so quickly, that he could loan me the money. He did everything but entertain the idea.

It struck me, today, the similarities in these two situations. Why are we selling Jesus as this product to people who we have hardly met, or in many cases, never met? When I hear this type of conversation, it strikes me as unnatural and out of place. While I know this pastor's intentions were of the best, it seems we have created a quick, cold, non-relational format on asking people to join our "system". I feel that Jesus lived a life of developed relationships in which He cared for people's needs, as this church was doing, but He also spent much time with these people. In my life, my closest relationships have a major common factor, time. My closest friendships have come as a result of spending time with these people, communicating with each other, but the level of communication does not begin with deep emotional conversations. Our conversations first began of factual information about each other, where we are from, what schools we went to, what food we like or dislike, etc. Eventually, after developing trust between us, our communication level grew deeper, allowing us to share intimate thoughts, ideas, and beliefs that leave us vulnerable. Granted, some relationships do grow much faster than others, but it almost always takes longer than 5 minutes... I feel that it is necessary to develop at least a more-than-surface-level relationship with someone before I unnaturally ask them to rush into the most vulnerable relationship they can have.

If I begin a relationship based on the idea of me being a "saved" person, you being a "lost" person, and my purpose of this relationship is to convince you to become "saved", I, initially, think that you would not want to be my friend, but if you did, I wouldn't foresee you trusting me very easily. But if I begin a relationship with us being equal human beings, as we all are, going through a journey of life and because we naturally desire to have close relationships, I feel that we will quickly develop the trust necessary to share our most vulnerable ideas and beliefs.

Again, I am still in question of this situation. It seems that many people do begin genuine relationships with Christ in response to situations like I experienced today. These are just thoughts, not quite yet beliefs.