church leadership & multilevel marketing

There are some multi-level marketing companies that are almost scams, and there are some that sell excellent products at reasonable prices. A church leader that doesn’t get a salary from the church would have to have a source of income from somewhere, and I’m not sure that a multi-level marketing person is any more of a concern than, say, a car salesman would be. Both the people buying the products and the people selling them would have to show discernment, but this is true in any transaction. I wouldn’t want a sales pitch to be taking place during Sunday School, of course, but in general, I don’t see a problem.

A dear, older couple in our church were involved in one of these companies, and it was quite some time after my coming here before I even knew it—perhaps even a couple years. They never actively tried to sell the products to church members, nor did they actively attempt to recruit distributors “under them.” Best I can tell, they were quite passive when it came to the church family.

However, in other places, I’ve seen AMWAY/Shaklee folks who had more evangelistic zeal for gaining recruits than a HA student on a Chicago bus route! Everyone at church became a potential customer or distributor, and the company was all they could talk about. Needless to say, their zeal created some tension. And that highlights one of the unique challenges of multi-level marketing “employment”: to succeed and gain a sustainable income, you almost have to recruit distributors under you so you can garner income from their sales. So it become very difficult not to bring work to church and have it result in a negative impact on church family relationships.

So, from my experience, I’d encourage the church leader to beware of allowing his business to distort his view of his brothers/sisters in Christ. It may be harder to do than he thinks!

It is inevitable that some of your customers will be church attendees, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, when I sold Tupperware, I often ended up doing business before and after church, dealing with orders, returns, questions, payment, etc… which was the last thing I wanted to do at church. I tried to encourage people to contact me during the week via phone and email, but people tend to wait until they see you, and most of the time that was church. There were also others who sold Pampered Chef, Mary Kay, Shaklee, etc… and there was an expectation that if they bought from you, you’d buy from them, hold parties, etc…

For a church leader, I think there might be a problem keeping some kind of distinction between church folks as sheep and church folks as customers.