RobinsonS

31Aug/115

The King Biscuit Flower Hour Show Album

Churches are renown for producing comic sans posters riddled with clipart and printed onto day-glo paper. Thankfully, this is in decline due to basic design packages with relatively tasteful templates. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop the text. Some of the tag lines are beyond belief (pun intended), for example, at the last world cup, "Make Jesus Your Goal!" >> WAKE UP PUBLISHERS!, this. is. dreadful. Really.

One could write commandments for this; "Thou shalt not attempt to challenge the public", "Thou shalt not give burden to those who know not that such burden doth existeth", "Thou shalt not try to be hip unto thee for thine will only show thyself up to be foolish" "Thou shalt not use terminology which doth meaneth nothing to thine punter and would bring ridicule unto thyself or freaketh thee out" "Thou shalt not use ye olde English, for thou'st will only get thyself unto an frightful kaffufle with thy thees, thous and thines".

Trying to coax people in, or getting them to recognise they have a problem they didn't know they had, isn't right. Speaking in terminology, isn't right. Making bold unfamiliar statements, isn't right. So, "Jesus died for you / Jesus loves you / Jesus is Alive!" type church posters don't mean anything in outreach. They don't. Why? Because Jesus isn't anything or anyone to the people you are reaching out to. Exchange the names in that poster, "Great Scott died for you" - my response, at best, would be > okay. "Great Scott loves you" > again, it doesn't matter to me if he does. "Great Scott is Alive!" > jolly good. To those who will be reading the poster, Jesus is little more than an exclamation. Don't freak them out or confuse them before they've even entered the building, that's the job of the congregation.

Commercial advertising is where people are told they have a problem they didn't know they had, or terminology is used to make the punter think they are out of touch or scare a consumer into thinking they can't live without a product. Come on, Christianity is better than that, don't bring it down to the level of advertising where you're trying to flog a product. Rise above this. Rise above dressing up. Rise above tactics. Just be relevant and honest.