My goodness, ‘Jesus advertising’ annoys me. When people I knew at Bible college do it (as they currently are), it annoys me even more. (No link is provided because, frankly, no matter how funky it is, I don’t want to know and I’m not interested in having others know either.)
James Valentine offers wisdom here:
In the past few weeks no less than Australia and Christianity has announced that they need to look at their branding. I’m not sure what to make of a faith that has branding issues. Of a Creator who’s putting pressure on the marketing department. You want to bring the waverers in? I don’t know—lightning bolt? Big voice from the sky? Some water into wine? I’d say branding issues dealt with.
But instead of upwardly referring the problem, this coalition of 20 Christian churches found …
Read on and weep. For this man’s advice (pagan though he be) could have saved us Australian Christians enough dollars to fund a new bishop! I’m not saying that this is what we should have bought with the saved dollars; all I’m saying is that it is a lot of dollars.
Should have given it to the poor, my Bible college friends. Anything but this.
I have noticed that people rarely think gospel and judgement is important in these marketing surveys.
I’ve concluded this very cheaply from the ‘marketing reseach’ recorded during the time of Jesus.
Di
My view is that the media is an area that Christians have had very little input into and I don’t think it would hurt try to see how we can use the media to make an impact on our evangelistic efforts.
The Jesus: All About Life (JAAL) campaign isn’t about giving a gospel message in the media, as the creators of the campaign say repeatedly in their material. It is to stoke a bit of interest and hopefully find a way for Christians to more easily share the gospel in their own sphere of influence.
It has to be part of an overall evangelistic strategy to be effective (again something the creators emphasize), including training of Christians to share the gospel and getting churches to put on events to give you something to bring your mates to. It isn’t a silver bullet but just one more option that Christians should have to bring the gospel to our communities.
The Jesus: All About Life (JAAL) campaign isn’t about giving a gospel message in the media
Funny you should mention this.
However, pagan James Valentine’s point is about brand awareness, not gospel presentation, and it is this use of a Jesus advertising campaign that annoys me.
Mind you, if Jesus advertisers were trying to use it as a substitute for gospel presentation, that would be even more annoying, so we can be thankful for small mercies.
At a local level, the anti-Scripture campaign being waged by the Sydney morning Herald this week (see editorial here (scroll down to “A lesson not learnt”) has been infinitely better for raising brand awareness of what churches are doing in the community, and what’s more it’s been free!
As I say, we could have saved the money and bought ourselves a bishop, or something else your particular denomination deems useful.
Anyway, don’t expect to see much criticism of these ad campaigns in any denominational publication soon. The money has been spent and must now be justified.
</cynics hat off, if temporarily<>.
Of course the campaign won’t have much impact if all we do is talk to other Christians about it.
Snap, Josh!
Our church is involved in this campaign. I don’t expect much out of it but at least it is promoting Jesus’ name. I guess it is a bit like putting a fish symbol on your car (do people remember that?), a bit of promotion but little else.
I at least hope that it shows that our church promotes Jesus rather than not but in the final analysis I do not expect much else.
The sign is a pretty shade of blue and red though, looks nice on our blond brick building.
Plus we can re-use the reverse of the sign to promote our Christmas gospel event.
Hey Gordo
Thanks for your sharp thinking – as always.
I spoke with a bunch of ladies this morning at our church’s playgroup. And picked up one benefit of recent ‘advertising’. They’re a real mix of ethnic and religious backgrounds.
One ‘very spiritual’ lady was shocked I was evangelising her. She wasn’t offended. She was shocked that my actions (and JAAL advertising) implies we believe that not all Australians were already Christians.
So does Jesus need a media campaign? No.
Do people need to know they have a real issue that needs to be addressed by Jesus?
Our promotion of Jesus communicates what we believe – people need to respond to him. Surely if we stop calling people publicly and broadly, to respond to Jesus, many more will arise like the ‘very spiritual’ lady who assume those who need him have already found him.
Speaking of free advertising for the cause of the gospel, don’t forget that Christopher Hitchens will be speaking (and being streamed live by video) at 8 pm Sydney time tomorrow. Details here.
Josh, your argument that the campaign
won’t have much impact if all we do is talk to other Christians about it.
applies very well here, except that our good friend Christopher Hitchens is raising brand awareness for us at no cost whatsoever.
Perhaps we should organize to tithe a freewill offering to him out of our various denominational advertising budgets.
Surely if we stop calling people publicly and broadly, to respond to Jesus, many more will arise like the ‘very spiritual’ lady who assume those who need him have already found him.
I suppose that will depend a bit on what we are saying in our sermons, Bible studies and personal conversations, Russell.
Anyway, once the advertising (like Christopher Hitchens only more pricey) is out there, we may as well make good use of it.
I read one of the organisers of the ad saying the ad is to combat the fact that it is hard to bring Jesus up (apart from as a swear word) in conversation in Australian culture. And it is hard isnt it? RE Christopher Hitchens giving free media exposure, correct me if I’m wrong, but he doesn’t bring up the name of Jesus does he? He just argues against “Christianity” and other religions.
It is a powerful thing to bring up the name of Jesus. Don’t people find that? When you’re with a group of people who are not believers you can almost feel the mood change when you mention his name, even if you’ve been talking about “Christianity” for the past half-hour.
With that in mind I think the ad isn’t a bad idea. To me it seems the organisers of this ad were dreaming big – “let’s get Jesus’ name out there in the public space in a positive way!” – and I like that.
Thanks Gordo for bringing this up. I’m feeling like my Christian friends and I have been politely standing around not saying what we are all thinking.
High-fallutin’ theological arguments aside, my main problem with the ads is that they make no sense to me. They are just bizarre. So if a non-Christian friend says to me, “What’s the deal with those Jesus ads?”, the best I can come up with is to say, “I dunno, they’re tacky aren’t they? I guess the point is that Jesus should be part of our lives.” If they then ask me to explain the specifics of the ad, I’d have to concede defeat!
Maybe I’m missing something that is obvious to everyone else. Maybe I’m looking for a deeper message that just isn’t there. Feel free to enlighten me!
I feel Really Bad now.
1. I haven’t seen the JAAL ads (don’t watch much TV), so if someone asks me about them, I can’t take whatever opportunity they offer.
2. I really, <i>really</i> like James Valentine’s yellow billboard idea.
Louise,
Dominic Steele (of Christians in the Media) has written a booklet and done a DVD on “How to get from JAAL to eternal life” ie how to use the ads to talk about Jesus. I guess he saw the need to help all of us to make the best of JAAL.
You can get samples at http://www.connectionsforlife.com.au Here endeth the commercial.
A sort of ‘Get out of JAAL free’ card, eh?
One good thing about the campaign is seeing all the different churches with the one banner.
At times it seems to outsiders like all the churches are at war with one another.
This united campaign is refreshing.
Although I agree with you in some respects Gordon, I don’t think it’s fair to discredit the entire campaign. Surely, it’s worthy to at least consider some of the positives which may come of it.
I heartily agree with David that it is refreshing to see banners up all over Sydney. In fact, I think it’s an incredible demonstration of partnership in the gospel that churches of all denominations all over NSW are banding together in a united front. And we should celebrate that at least.
Also, a large campaign like this heightens evangelistic fervour amongst Christians. Seeing so many people doing the same thing is such an encouragement – although we may not be hearing about it, I’m sure God is using this to encourage many people to step out and have a conversation they wouldn’t have otherwise had.