If the worth of your career position is measured in how many different kind of salespeople want to access you, pastors are on the bottom of the pile. The only sales calls I get are from funeral home salesmen. It is nothing in me that attracts these people, it is the mere fact that I am the ‘doorway to the dead’. I am the man who can help grieving families make that critical choice of choosing a funeral director. This week I got a double whammy, a funeral salesman and an Amway operative all wrapped up in one. Not only that, he called me ‘bro!’ and my office manager ‘babe’!

So there you go, not only am I getting hit up for funerals, but I get landed with Amway at the same time! Furthermore, I get called ‘bro’ by a silver haired 50something sales guy and my office manager gets called ‘babe’. She was secretly happy, as she hasn’t been called that by another man for years! She just would have prefered a younger more hunky candidate.

To be fair, the Amway thing only came up in converasation, and I wasn’t asked to have a coffee to talk about a ‘business opportunity with a global company with revoltionary new product lines”.

The salesman needs dead people, that is the business of funeral homes no matter how nice and dignified they are. It’s a business. When I am asked for help in nominating a funeral home I usually find myself in a quandary: which business do I promote?

To help me make that decision possibly is the slide rule of who gave me what. The best I’ve ever got was some pens, a desk calendar and notepads. This week all I got was a half hour out of a busy schedule building an instant relationship with a salesman who could just as well have left me his brochures. “So tell us about yourself..”

I think in future I will take the “send us your stuff in the post mate and I’ll add it to the burgeoning file I have filled with glossies from your competitors.”

I’m sure big shot pastors from mega-churches get fawned on a lot by all manner of sales and marketing people - “Hi my name is Randy, and I’m the corporate executive account manager for LearJet. Just wondered if you’d like a round of golf with Tiger Woods and I at Augusta on Thursday before the Open?”

For me, the Death Salesmanis about as good as it is going to get. Correction: whilst typing this entry a parishioner rang to offer free tickets to see the Rugby Union Super 14 game between the Queensland Reds and the Western Force. there you go, I matter to at least one other person. Only problem is that he works in the power generation industry. That’s got me thinking, perhaps we should change our church name to include ‘dunamis!!!’….

Any advice or soothing words for my ego gratefully accepeted.