Many people feel, I think, that marketing is some sort of spurious activity, mean-spirited and stealth. I disagree. Admittedly, marketing can be cast as some sort of dark force, intent on deception. But marketing can also be a very positive force, a brilliant, sunlit one, promising and delivering wholesome and honest messages; achieving honorable altruistic results. I am led to this sort of thinking by my recent studies of the Bible. There I find many examples of how Jesus used marketing ideas to influence, guide and inspire people. Jesus was a fine marketer. I know that this may not be a popular idea in a culture disposed to crass commercialism and advertising, much of which is inspired by less than wholesome purposes. But you don't have that problem. You work in a field of altruism where the seeds you plant often bear wonderful fruit (higher education). Products of higher education abound. They are all around us. They are we and we are they.

To take advantage of your powerful spiritual position you need to understand principles of marketing and apply them to your daily work. You will then have unleashed a force to do good, one which may be (I hope!) divinely inspired. Those creative juices will begin to flow, yielding strong new activities. They will truly be driven on wings of angels.

Now, at this point, you may be wondering if Bob has lost his mind or has fallen off the deep end of some unseen intellectual abyss. I can assure you I have not. I have given this idea a lot of thought and attention. In some ways I have been afraid to write about it. I considered masking it in an article about religiously-affiliated institutions. I could have done that because I believe those schools have an obvious marketing niche advantage over others. But strangely, they do little to understand and explore it. They often seem to languish in some sort of never-never land, afraid to take a stance, locked up in their own insecure indecision. They often put "candles under bowls."

IS IT STRANGE?
Isn't it strange that institutions with the most spiritual potential are afraid to move on their base convictions? Most try, I find, to conceal the Truth rather than glorify it. Rather sad, don't you think?

Of course secular institutions also seem to dodge the obvious. They are also pillars of Truth and Spiritual Power, but are indecisive in behavior. They prefer to duck their deepest emotions, afraid to trumpet their achievements, for fear of being wrongly judged. As a result, apathy and indecision stifle them in uncertainty, reluctance and passivity.

You may wonder what all this has to do with marketing higher education (my area of interest). I feel it has a lot to do with it but most people are afraid to talk about it or even think or discuss it amongst their peers. Let's bring it out in the open and examine it for what it is. It may be a place to hang our hats. It may represent a light of hope in an otherwise darkened place of pain and reluctance.

CUT AND SAVE
All higher education's retrenchments and repositionings have caused me great personal grief. It may have you too. All around us, it seems fiscal fires are burning. People, fine people, are being laid off, or their positions threatened. I saw my whole department, fifty people, at Stanford University swept away in one destructive action.

Some of the people from that department have been saved by their own resourcefulness. Others have not been so lucky. Some have watched their loved ones die, health care benefits lost. It has indeed been a tragic situation. But we must not get mired down in the false belief that all is lost because it simply is not true. We have much to be grateful for despite the frequent fearful headlines in the Chronicle of Higher Education and the occasional derisiveness of colleagues and faculty.

It is, I think, time to trumpet our successes and "gird our loins" with the Truth of our Convictions. I stand for the Truth and Goodness of our work. Do you join me?

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?
I recommend you think about the ways your institution displays spirituality. Some of the ways may be very obvious. Others may be quite concealed. It may be wise to do focus group research using internal constituents such as students, parents, faculty and fellow administrators to get the answer to some basic questions. Ask the spiritual question: "How do you think XYZ College) (your institution) displays spirituality? Make sure answers are not too simple such as "We have a chapel".: or... "There is a Christian Science Club" or "Our football team prays before each game for a victory." Those are "cop out" answers and may not get to the real core issue of institutional spirituality.

This article was inspired by a recent course I took called Alpha (practical introduction of the Christian faith). This article is dedicated to the memory of my late wife Martha Flint Topor.