Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) and Church

Recently, I had a chance to explore both of these activities and come to have a little more understanding on how their systems work. Although the product they offers are no way close to be identical, one is to build a business while the other offers religious believes, they both work in a similar way where it relies on a concept of building a triangle network, or a pyramid.  

In MLM, there is the founder which similar to the pastor at a church. In MLM, each person has to pay an initiation fees to becomes an independent agent while in church, one must first believe. MLM offers seminars to get the independent agents familiar with their products and to provide the skills/information for them, which is similar to the church retreats, bible studies, and Sunday Church. In order to be successful in the MLM, each independent agent is required to go out, try promoting the products, and recruit their independent agents . This is similar to the the activities of promoting the Gospels in Church. 

The success of MLM and church are determined by the size of the network that was built, in other words, the number of independent agents (for MLM) or followers (for church). Their success are heavily relied on the influence of the founder or the pastor. 

No offense to either systems but it's interesting to learn about the similarities on how their systems work.