Over recent years, Apple has come out with product after product that gives many people the desire to drop everything an go buy one.  I remember when Macs were still “Macintosh” computers and the only place I ever saw them was in elementary school computer labs.  Now mac is a common household name and the iPhone is one of the most popular phones on the planet.

Well, Apple has done it again.  The iPhone 4 was officially announced yesterday and yes, I want one.  I’m not going to give you all the specs because you can go to apple.com for all that.  I want to briefly go into why I want one.  Sure, it’s got great new features and would better serve me as a faster and stronger phone than my current phone, but I think it’s more than that.  My current iPhone 3GS is a great phone and serves me well.  Why then do I have this desire to get the new one?

I think it has to do with Apple’s ability to get you excited about products before anyone even knows what they are.  That, combined with great products and our consumer nature to want everything that’s new and cool in this country, shows that Apple knows what they are doing when it comes to selling their products.

How does that give me an excuse to get one?  When it comes down to it, it doesn’t.  Do I need an excuse to get one?  Not really.  Will I get one?  That’s still left to be seen.

The real questions I want to ask are: How do we create this excitement in ministry?  Is it possible to get people excited about Christ before they even know who He is?  How do we show people that He is always new and can make them new too?  We have a “product” called grace that is better than anything that any company on earth can offer yet we can’t seem to get new people interested.  Some of that has to do with the many people that have been “burned” by the church in the past, but just like Apple products, it’s more than that.

Christ can overcome anything that the church has done to turn people away from Him.  Why do we not chase after those people then?  Why do many of us avoid even trying to develop relationships with them?  I want to make the argument that we are not taking the calling from Christ to make disciples seriously enough.

When I started writing this post I was planning to just discuss my consumerist nature and desire to get an new iPhone, but as you can see there’s more to it than that.  Apple didn’t make me want their new iPhone.  We can’t make people want a relationship with Christ.  What Apple can do is show their product to me and let me decide what to do with that information.  What we can do is show people what a relationship with Christ is and develop our relationships with them as well to give them the opportunity to respond.