Our world keeps changing, and our ways of relating in our fast paced, information charged world keep changing.
Chef as brand
Recently I read of a new phenomenon arising out of the current heightened interest in cooking. It is the concept of ‘chef as brand’.
Until recently chefs became famous for their dishes and the restaurants they ran. Diners desired to eat a dish cooked by a brilliant chef. Every now and then they would make a fortune by producing a cookbook of their best recipes.
A change has now occurred where the chef has become the guru and his name a way of summarizing an experience or at least a hoped for experience. Just employing the chef’s name is marketing advantage. These chefs now market not the dishes they have sweat over in the kitchen but their name. Famous chefs franchise their restaurant name for others to do the cooking. They also develop and market product lines under their name to be sold in specialty shops and supermarkets. It is not hard to name some of the names.
These days you purchase not something produced by a chef, but a dream or expectation that is tied up with that person’s name.
Man as brand
The same sort of thing is happening in churches. I notice that if the person is young the term ‘dude’ is often applied to them.
The great leaders, visionaries and preachers have their ministries franchised out. People all around the world are happy to be known by their attachment to these people.
So what?
People as brand are part of the world we now inhabit. I am not sure how this came about, nor how widespread it is. It could be that we are bombarded by so much information that we just have to join a club of some kind.
One consequence of ‘man as brand’ though is that when joining a ‘man’ we join not just their theology, but also their practices and their friends become our friends. This makes the separation of issues more complex; joining up with a person involves becoming a partner in all sorts of ways. I actually think that this has always been the case. It is just more obvious these days, and so we need to beware that in accepting some good things about ‘the man’ we don’t inadvertently accept other things we might not have otherwise done.
It is so normal now to follow our heroes, but the perpetual warning remains: the one on whom we must fix our sights is Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith.
Banner photo credit: jurvetson
