For What It Is

I'm sitting here on my day off watching playhouse disney with my daughter. And one of the things that I just can't stand about playhouse disney just happened. In between their 20 minute shows they run different spots, some are educational, and there's one that's supposed to be a game, in-fact it's called "Go go gametime." The problem is that it's not really a game. The segment is about a minute long, and I'd say about 50 seconds of this spot is an advertisment for something that they're just releasing (some sort of disney product, usually on DVD) and then the last 10 seconds is a very sorry excuse for a game. Instead of calling it "go go gametime" they should call it "go go ad-time." Let's call a horse a horse. Just because you put a clown nose on a horse doesn't make it a clown.

I feel like we do the same thing sometimes with our churches. There are some cases where we advertise ourselves in our community as being a hip, relelvant church when in actuality we are not. We should not advertise a church that doesn't exist. Some churches advertise that they'll be dealing with a certain topic, usually hoping that it's relevant, but when people come, the church spends only a few minutes dealing with the topic (if at all - it's amazing how sometimes a pastor thinks he's delt with a topic, but never actually mentions it), when the actual point of a message are verses 2 & 3 of the third chapter. Some churches advertise a contemporary service, but when people come they find their definition of contemporary is very different than the churches.

Let's call a spade a spade. It would be far better if the reverse was true. Wouldn't it be far better if people came to our churches and found something far better than what was advertised? When you're looking at advertising in the near future, advertise your event for what it is.