What Happened to Donald Miller?

Before I start this, I want to be clear: I respect Donald Miller, for the value of his past work alone if nothing else. My ruminations here on what has happened to him are likely going to involve a little bit of poking fun at him, and marketing gurus in general, and the whole cosmos of productivity experts and business advice and 6 steps to make your branding more effective and…crap I’m already bored.

Years ago, Donald Miller was a quirky and engaging writer who wrote a couple of books about theology that were unlike other books. One of them was even made into a movie. He made a big impact in the world of semi-progressive or progressive-leaning Evangelicalism, it seemed, and in the emerging emergent church, and in my own thinking as well. I encountered his books in seminary in the late aughts (or as some like to say, the naughties), and they presented me with some thoughts and ideas that I hadn’t seen before. I’ve actually only read three of his books: Blue Like Jazz, Searching for God Knows What, and A Million Miles In A Thousand Years. In brief, the first two are about theology and the last one is about stories, including one’s life story, and the third was definitely a turn toward inspirational writing rather than thought-provoking writing, at least in my view.

But he was an interesting voice saying interesting things in the area of theology – an area where a surprisingly small number of interesting things are said. Almost all theology is just rewording past theology. Miller did some of that, but his oblique approach and awkward courage made him stand out.

Fast-forward a few years after I read A Million Miles In A Thousand Years, and there is StoryBrand, which is what Donald Miller does now. StoryBrand is a marketing and branding company that, if I’m honest, is the same as every other marketing and branding company. Telling you how to tweak your homepage to get more clicks, and how to write a welcome email that increases your sales, or how to get your employees to work together a little bit better. And if there is something that is more boring, derivative, and banal than most theology, it has to be business advice. It’s even worse than self-help because it isn’t about people, as much as marketing gurus say it is – it is about making incrementally more money than your competitors.

[Sad celebration image here]

Yaaay. Incrementally more money than my competitors.

So what happened, from my point of view, is that an interesting person with interesting things to say about questions that matter seems to have morphed into a banal person who says derivative things about questions that do not matter in the slightest on any grand scale. StoryBrand isn’t about serving the common good or making the world better. It is just about taking whatever widget you sell and helping you rearrange your words and images to sell slightly more widgets.

I would still recommend reading Blue Like Jazz and Searching for God Knows What and even A Million Miles In A Thousand Years – in that order of priority, actually. But I honestly don’t know what happened to Donald Miller. Did he sell out? Was he pierced by cold iron? Is he a pod person?

It’s just sad, when someone doing genuine good in the world just seems to give up and instead does some crap that earns more money. Am I jealous? No. Look at this blog, I’m clearly not motivated by money or even having an audience.

I’d like to have met the past Donald Miller, but from what I can tell, that guy’s long gone. But if you want to tweak your branding so that you sell slightly more widgets than the next widgeteer, I suppose I know a guy…