Installment #1

"The Fine Art of Evangelism"
(or, "How I Risked Excommunication from the Faith")

heretic (her_e-tik) n. A person who holds controversial opinions in any 
area; especially one who publicly dissents from the officially accepted 
dogma of the Roman Catholic Church. [Middle English (h)eretik,  from Old 
French (h)eretique, from Late Latin haereticus, from Greek hairetikos, able 
to choose, factious, from hairetos, from hairein, to take, choose. See heresy.]

schismatic (siz-mat__k, skis-) adj. 1. One who advocates separation or 
division into factions, especially a formal breach of union within a Christian 
church. The offense of attempting to produce such a split within a church 
or religious group. 3. A schismatic body or sect. [Middle English (s)cisme, 
from Old French, from Late Latin schisma, from Greek skhisma, a split, 
division, from skhizein, to split.

Lector:	 I was afraid of this. My dear fellow readers, I fear that our 
author has lost touch with reality. It is not entirely his fault. 
You see, he writes regularly for theological journals as well as for this 
thoroughly delightful computer publication. He has been under a bit of a 
strain this last month, what with his having to produce extra articles to 
cover his summer hiatus (holiday, to you and me) and all. It seems that the 
pressure was more than his simple mind could bear. He is preparing to 
launch upon a theological treatise which will be of little interest to you or 
I. I suggest that we move on to other pastures and leave him to sort out 
his personal problems.

Auctor:	How terribly kind of you to make my apologies for me_but 
totally uncalled for, I assure you. I have not "lost touch with reality," 
appearances to the contrary. Far from setting out upon a voyage which 
would leave fans of computerdom bored to tears, I am setting our 
collective foot upon a path which may well lead you and I on a fantastic 
and most profitable journey.

Lector:	Profitable? Did you say profitable?

Auctor:	Indeed!

Lector:	Lead on, sir scribe, lead on.

For some of you whose eyes fall upon these words, an introduction is in 
order. As they have been promising (or "threatening," depending upon 
your perspective), the boys and girls on the NAUTILUS team have 
delivered a version of this "CD-ROM Multimedia Magazine" for the IBM PC 
platform as well as for the Macintosh_. For the benefit of newcomers on 
either flavor of microcomputer I feel compelled to offer a brief apologia 
(look it up in your dictionary, okay?):


Who is This Nut Case, Anyway?

I am by vocation a priest. This is the Englished form of the Latin presbyter, 
the comparative of the noun presbus which means "old man." As the 
comparative presbyter should translate as "older man" or "elder," or, (as 
my nephew Jared Andrew would translate it) "old fart." However you 
choose to bring the term into the English, it is what I am and what I have 
been for fifteen deliriously happy years in the service of the Church.

I am by profession an academic, a professor of Greek Scriptures and of 
Early Church History, to be precise. In this capacity I have developed these 
unfortunate (to some) habits of analyzing vocables to their nth degree and 
of indulging in endless parenthetical explorations of minutiae. 

I am, by avocation, a microcomputer fanatic of the Macintosh persuasion. 
For those of you who may be following this train of thought to its 
inevitable wreck upon the monitor of an IBM PC or compatible, I would 
urge you not to flip on to another section. Remember that I have promised 
you a "profitable" excursion if only you will bear with me. My fascination 
with the Macintosh may be by your lights an aberration verging upon a sin 
against God and nature. You are welcome to your opinion, but may we 
agree to disagree? Good!

What I have been doing in the bits and bytes of previous issues of 
NAUTILUS  for the Macintosh is a direct outgrowth of this obsession I have 
with any tools which equip the individual to offload some of the more 
mundane and boring aspects of his/her day-to-day work. In specific I 
have exhorted folks to band together in User Groups for mutual support 
and comfort in those moments of calamity ("My hard disk has crashed! 
Now what do I do?") and of indecision ("Which word processor gives the 
most bang for the buck without taking an eternity to learn how to use it?").

The two definitions I began to ponder at the outset (I nearly said "Before I 
was so rudely interrupted." but that wouldn't be nice, now would it?) come 
to mind given my concern as to whether the boys and girls who have given 
me the privilege of writing for them on matters Macintosh will drum me 
out of the corps. Macintosh users, as you either know because you are one 
or have heard through the grapevine, can be iconoclasts when it comes to 
their computer religion. Knowing that there are rabid pro-IBM forces on 
the other side of the screen doesn't make me sleep any easier. Before one 
side breaks out the thumb screws and iron maiden or the other side 
prepares to receive me into membership I should move on to explain what 
I am about in this "Crossover Dream."

My infatuation with the Macintosh and my wholly positive experience with 
User Groups shall prove to be, I trust, a boon to users of all types of 
computers. Were it not for the Mac I should never have come to know one 
of the premier advocates of the Mac, Mister Guy Kawasaki by name. It is 
Guy who has mapped the path down which I propose to lead you in these 
rambling thoughts. Guy, you see, has put pen to paper a second time and 
has followed up his popular first title, The Macintosh Way, with a book 
which is self-consciously not only trans-platform but useful beyond the 
realm of computing as well. The title of this volume is Selling the Dream: 
How to Promote Your Product, Company, or Ideas _ and Make a Difference 
_ Using Everyday Evangelism.


Religious Idiom in a New Medium

Having already warned you that I have some vested interest in seeing 
Selling the Dream come up a winner (although it does not go so far as being 
a financial interest_Guy is a friend, but he has not agreed to distribute 
shares of the profits to all of his buddies_drat and double drat!) I shall also 
admit that the book would have caught my eye had it been written by H. 
Ross Perot. How could I, a professor of Theology, not be attracted to any 
business title which concludes with a quote from the Gospel according to 
Matthew and which uses words such as "tithe", "believe," and "convert" 
without smirking? This book is a rara avis  in anyone's estimation.

Not only in his sources, but in his vocabulary as well Guy draws upon the 
language and imagery of faith communities. The book's subtitle with its 
use of the term "evangelism" tips its author's hand. While Guy does not 
plumb the depths of the _tiology of the noun, he certainly seems to know 
from whence it comes.  euangelion  The prefix eu meaning "good" and 
angelion (as in angel, don't you know) meaning "news" or "announcement." 
In its oldest usage the term was applied to the announcement of the 
Emperor's birthday when everyone, slaves and software engineers 
included, was given a day off from work. From its Latin usage the term 
was adapted first by the rabbis and then by their Christian counterparts to 
refer to the mighty acts of God by which the people of God were/are 
delivered. Good news is not in its oldest sense a thing which can be sold or 
bartered. Good news is that which one announces while at the same time 
inviting others to partake of, be infected by, join in the propagation of that 
great, good news.

The process by which one evangelizes is what Kawasaki calls "selling the 
dream." The practice of evangelism might be profitably compared with 
that of Donald Trump in his book The Art of the Deal. "In contrast with the 
old-fashioned concept of closing a deal, evangelism means showing others 
why they should dream your dream." (Selling the Dream, page 3) For any 
of us, whether a captain of industry in three-piece suit or high school 
activist attempting to dissuade the school cafeteria from using Styrofoam 
cups, the model is applicable. For some our selling must result in dollars 
and cents (lest our managers put us out to pasture before our IRAs have 
matured); for others the satisfaction of saving a bit of wetlands in our 
community is payment in full. For all parties this is a book to inspire, to get 
us off our backsides and back into the streets, to either revive flagging 
ideals or to distill in our minds causes not yet clearly articulated.

Lector: 	Ahem.

Auctor:	Am I to deduce from that clearing of your throat that
		you have something to say at this juncture?

Lector:	Deduce if you must, but I most certainly have
		something to say.

Auctor:	Namely?

Lector:	Namely that I fail to see where I am going to profit from
		this Kawasaki person's book. It looks to me like he's the
		one who is going to put dollars in the bank. My dollars
		but in his bank account!

Auctor:	As Moses put it so eloquently, "You shall not muzzle an ox
		when it treads out the grain." (Deuteronomy 25:4) But that is
		too flip (and perhaps too theological) an answer for you. If I
		may continue_


The profit for all readers of these random thoughts is to be found in one's 
applications of the book's insights to his/her situation in life. I wish that I 
could rise to the enthusiastic level of the book's author when he observes,   
"The Me age of the eighties is changing to the We age of the nineties. 
People are whispering to themselves, 'Is that all there is to life?' and 
they're deciding to give something back." (Selling, page 10) I fear that a 
steady diet of classrooms filled with sophomores in search of the 
occupation which will yield the largest bank account has turned me into a 
curmudgeon before my time.

Whether curmudgeon or not, the areas in which one may evangelize are 
bounded only by our imagination, as Monsieur Kawasaki illustrates so 
capably:

You can apply evangelism to diverse issues, such as improving your 
school's Parent-Teacher Association, selling more whole wheat biscuits, 
rescuing a local stream from polluters, or conducting a successful seminar.

The key to everyday evangelism is believing that your cause is important. 
Never doubt yourself_who's to say that your cause won't make history?  
(Selling, page 11)

I must resist the temptation to continue on quoting huge chunks of this 
admirable title lest fewer people go out and buy copies. Suffice it to say 
that my personal experience resonates to so much of this book's contents 
that I wish I had written it. 


A Book Filled with Life Experience

Guy Kawasaki is not a presbyter_the paucity of grey hairs in his luxurious, 
jet-black mane confirms this fact. What he lacks in years of personal 
experience he more than compensates for by his gleaning in the fields of 
other folks' lives and their experiences. I didn't keep count of how many 
different individuals or companies Guy quotes, but the variety of sources is 
nothing short of astounding. Ben & Jerry's Homemade, Inc., the Billy 
Graham Schools of Evangelism, SeniorNet, the Harley-Davidson Owners 
Group, the author's wife Beth, John Sculley of Apple Computer, Inc., and on 
and on.

From these many settings in life Kawasaki derives principles which may be 
applied, as I have indicated above, to just about any situation in which you 
or I may find ourselves. Two examples which stick in this reviewer's mind 
are those of Windham Hill Productions (purveyors of musical recordings) 
and the Billy Graham Schools of Evangelism. The former is cited as "a 
company that became a cause" whose success Guy attributes to the fact 
that "they (Windham Hill customers/evangelists) know that if Windham 
Hill is going to survive and continue to publish this kind of music, they 
have to help it succeed." (Selling, page 20) Which of us wouldn't like to 
send our customers, students, clients out into the world to recruit more 
fanatics like themselves? I shall be very surprised if the ideas presented 
in this book do not equip you to transmit your personal contagion in like 
manner.

Of the Billy Graham Schools of Evangelism, once Kawasaki has recovered 
from the exorbitant tuition of $25 for a four-day seminar, he presses on to 
ferret out the motivation which undergirds an event that packs 600 people 
into a room licensed for no more than 300 ("apparently the Bible is a 
higher authority than the fire code.") Multo in parve, as my high school 
Latin instructor was wont to say, "Much in little." And all of it pulled off 
with a panache and humor to die for.

Lest anyone go away from this month's column complaining that there is 
nothing here for the hard-core computer junkie I shall quickly urge upon 
you the application of Guy's dictum that evangelists are "called, not driven" 
to the apparent disarray within IBM at this point in time. The CEO and 
Chairman of this worthy corporation has been giving his managers a 
healthy tongue lashing for their lack of motivation. Coercion does not a 
great evangelist make.

And, so as to at least give the illusion of being even-handed, I must point 
out Guy's thinly veiled criticisms directed at Apple's management of the 
highest echelon: 

The revolving trap door for executives at Apple illustrates the danger of 
hiring people who don't understand the vision. Beginning in 1985, Apple 
began to hire "saviours" to run the company and to increase Earnings Per 
Share. None of them understood personal computers (as opposed to soap, 
sugared water, tampons, or insurance) because they came from companies 
such as Procter & Gamble, Pepsi, Playtex, and Cigna. (Selling, page 30)

Gee, I wonder who at Apple used to work for Pepsi?

Even if you usually don't, Read the Appendix!

I suspect that even such IBM users as may still be with us are familiar 
with the mythos which surrounded the Macintosh's origin and 
introduction: The stories about the separate facility where the Mac 
hardware and software jockeys worked; the grand piano in its lobby and 
the pirate flag which flew from its roof; the masseuse on 24 hour a day call 
to sooth the frazzled nerves of overworked and temperamental staff; et 
alii. When one first hears these tales they have the flavor of one of those 
Mickey Rooney/Andy Hardy movies. "Hey gang. Your Mom has a bunch of 
old clothes in the attic, doesn't she? And your Dad has some paint we can 
use to make the scenery. My Dad said we can use the barn. Let's put on a 
show!"

To debunk some of the more mythic elements of the Mac's introduction, 
while at the same time communicating the evangelistic fervor which the 
Mac commanded and still commands in some of these quarters, Kawasaki 
has reproduced in its entirety the PIP (Product Introduction Plan) for the 
Macintosh in a 104 page appendix. Mac devotees will appreciate the 
insights offered as to how their computer of choice made it to market 
against all odds_people inhabiting blue offices in the vicinity of Armonk, 
New York, could learn a few things about guerilla marketing (better said,    
"evangelism"!) from the appendix and from the 202 pages which precede 
it. Buy a copy for yourself and a second for your favorite manager.

As the angelic voice said to Saint Augustine while he sat in the garden 
sorting out his life options,

                                           Tolle lege!
                                (Take up and read!)

Selling the Dream
by Guy Kawasaki
x + 337 pages
HarperCollins Publishers
New York
Available August 1991
ISBN 0-06-016632-0
May be purchased from The Mac Zone (800-248-0800) and 
electronically from America Online ("Shopping and Travel")

How you can reach me:
Father Larry David McCormick
(a.k.a.: Father Mack)
The Fordham University Mac Users Group
Professor of Theology/Fordham University
Department of Theology	Collins Hall
The Bronx, New York 10458

-or-

Bitnet: frmac@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu

-or-

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