Amway Jesus: MLMs and Mission-Driven Churches
Multi-level marketing (MLM) models predicate themselves on unpaid labor. A lot of people work for free so that a few people can get paid. In this scenario, laborers are called “partners”. “Partners” sell a product or service they’re also consuming.
To wit : Hello, would you like to buy a very good energy drink like the one I’m drinking?
In this scenario, “partners” are distributors who both buy and sell from the same supply. And, in addition to buying and selling, “partners” are tasked with recruiting more workforce — the floor level of the model’s hierarchy. From this perspective, everything telescopes down into acquiring more “partners.”
To wit: Oh, you don’t like energy drinks? But what if I told you buying and selling energy drinks could make you rich? You don’t even have to like energy drinks!
“Partners” ultimately fertilize and grow a network of lower-level buyers and sellers. “Partners” recruit “partners” to recruit “partners” — sales self-pollinate, the funnel gets fatter, and the network becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. It’s the people who matter. Never mind what you’re actually buying or selling. In an MLM, you’re part of a distributor network. And people are your business. You don’t even have to like energy drinks. You just find people who do. Who might find more people who might not like energy drinks either, but who might find people who do.
Amway is the company everyone knows, because they eat everyone’s lunch in this space and three of the top five companies ranked by revenue sell cosmetics. Which is fitting, because what’s really being sold here is a concept (networking) masquerading as a product (shitty energy drinks, cosmetics, etc.).
MLMs are sold as a system of opportunity, but they require that your family, your friends, the people you care about and the people you don’t might all be equally leveraged.
How many times have you been invited to “party” full of shitty Tupperware, home décor or herbal supplements? Have you ever crowded into someone’s living room to be sold a bunch of stuff you didn’t really want, surrounded by a bunch of people you didn’t really like? That’s “Party Evangelism,” except when the church people party, you usually can’t double-fist glasses of boxed wine until your face tingles in an attempt to understand a bunch of kitchen appliances you never knew existed until the moment you were asked to buy them.
As a matter of MLM networking, everyone is a potential asset because they hold potential value. Your life as currently constituted — assuming you have absolutely anyone in it — has opportunity and value!
Whether it’s a cursory chat with the person next to you at a restaurant, or a grocery store or with yourbabysitter; any small talk with the person handing you your to-go order, sales receipt, small children; or a phone call to your mom, aunt, uncle or friend ostensibly about this thing, or that thing, or some other thing. It’s all pretext. Every action (e.g. conversation, drink, meal, time spent) is steeped in the potential of a future transaction.
Now, imagine recruiting people to a product and/or network you actually believed in. You might become a good evangelist.
You also may become infatuated by the sheer usefulness of other people and their potential (it’s really mesmerizing!), and you might begin to understand how valuable your time is relative to how beneficial other people might be for your cause. You might even form relationships on the basis of utility, thus evaluated on potential rate of return.
Now, imagine understanding people as conditional investments and really concerning yourself with growth rates for a product you really believe in — for the greater good. You might become a really, really good evangelist.
I won’t compare all Evangelical churches to mid-level marketing schemes, because there’s not a straight line to be drawn between all of them them in practice. But — here’s my point: there’s clear danger in conflating the growth of a network with its health.
What happens when growth becomes priority over health? What happens inside of highly-recruited (church people call them hyper-missional) environments which require fast and rapid growth? What happens when a network must grow? Everyone outside of the network is a target and everyone inside of it is a mark.
At the point in which growth must happen and happen fast, appearances become very important as does the ability to replicate yourself in other people. Good brands have uniformity around mission and a clear brand promise. And good businesses have scalability. Scale is always power. To this end, I once sat in a church auditorium full of people who were listening very attentively to a man at the front of it. He was building his own network. He framed his terms in light of eternity and truly believed in things that have eternal consequences. And I heard him say as to his mission:
I want us to be a faceless army, full of people.
I thought, man that’s something! How the fuck are we supposed to see anything if we don’t have a face? What happens if we have something to say? I guess we still have our ears, so it’s best to listen if we’re all aspiring to be blind and mute.
The farther away I’ve moved from that network (a network you can read more about here), the more I’ve thought about how a mission’s aspiration towards facelessness shouldn’t be its unifying principle.
How does facelessness manifest itself in practice/as a body politic? Innocently at first, as a haircut or a shave. Maybe a shirt with more buttons on it, or pants with less holes in them. Again, good brands are very consistent. And then incestuously, in the form of a narrow taxonomy of belief and action— vocabulary, even. It’s a taxonomy you share, but don’t ultimately control. It changes, and then you change. In that order. At the moment you don’t change, or lose a certain level of elasticity, you understand that the back door of the room is much bigger than the front. The mission is fixed, and everyone is fungible. Again, good businesses are able to scale.
Facelessness is ultimately a war on personality. It culminates in an environment in which people become unidentifiable from the inside out — copy paper floating around stacks and stacks of simulacrum. Thoughts and behaviors become automated. If the mission is growth and the mission is scale, you’d better have better have strong legs and good ears.
He who has (only) ears, let him hear. Pick up your cross, and give up your face.
So, if you ever find yourself sitting in a room with someone who wants to take away what’s uniquely identifying about your personage, and sell that concept as a product, you should listen to what that person is saying. Figure out what that partnering with them actually means.
As for my body, I would like to lose twenty pounds. I’d also like to increase my levels of good cholesterol and get rid of my heartburn. All of these things are influenced by the amount of care I do or don’t give them. Most are indicators of health, and are within my own control. But a commander of a faceless army is not primarily concerned with your health. What you can’t see, he will see for you. And what you can’t say, is, well, what you can’t say.
