Marketing A More Relevant Jesus

Now Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.This week’s item is from Canada’s The Globe and Mail, November 8, 2006, with a headline:New Ads Make Church More Relevant.The following are excerpts: The new 10.5 million dollar ad campaign of the United Church of Canada features ads that portray Jesus alternatively as Santa Claus and as a bobble head doll, is winning accolades across the ad industry while church leaders reacted with cautious approval.Ad agencies executives say the campaign should be effective at positioning the church as tolerant and relevant.The ads which will run in magazines and community newspapers also raised the controversial issue of gay marriage, and asked whether certain exotic sex acts are sins.Reverend Peter Wyatt, the principal of the University of Toronto’s UnitedChurchTheologicalCollege said he was amazed and glad when he picked up his newspaper and saw a Jesus bobble head doll on the front page.Rather than tell people what the UnitedChurch stands for, such as ordaining women and same-sex marriage, the advertisements encouraged them to ask question about issues of faith.

Tom:

You know Dave, last week you quoted Scripture—I think it was Luke 18, When the Son of man cometh we find the faith on the earth?This just outrageous, it’s tragic, outrageous as how we are soft about this.This blasphemous, this is just a complete disregard for the Scriptures.I mean, they could care less.It all comes down to, Well, what will people think?How can we dialogue about these things?How can we demonstrate that we are really friends of the world and things that are going on in the world, that we can accommodate them—certainly, Christianity is broader than some of these narrow minded people think.

Dave:

And the word, Tom, is stupid and insane!If we could get the whole world to believe in a Jesus who is a cross between a bobble head doll and Santa Claus, wouldn’t that be great?No, it would not be great, you would be sending them all to hell, it would be a delusion.This is not Jesus Christ.The Bible says, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever.Jesus said, he that hath seen me hath seen the Father.Paul writes:Great is the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh.Now, you’re manifesting God—I’m beginning to get angry, Tom.

Tom:

You should, this is righteous anger, without a doubt.

Dave:

You’re manifesting God in the flesh with a Santa Claus Jesus or a bobble head doll Jesus, and you look at that and you have seen the Father?Tom, you said it was blasphemy—

Tom:

Well, part of the reason they say they are doing this, is to get attention.In other words, they place these things like the bobble head doll, or they put a person that, supposedly looks like Jesus sitting in a mall with a child on His lap, and the whole idea is that they are trying to raise interest, and then they send them to a website in which they can dialogue about these things.I mean, it’s very much like the Alpha Course, Dave, in which you come in to a meeting of people and nobody can correct anything, nobody can say, Well, wait a minute, this isn’t really Jesus, and Jesus would not go along with this.Doctrine has to be pushed way aside, it is insane!

Dave:

I’m sure they are raising interest, interest in what, in whom?

Tom:

Well certainly, not the biblical Jesus.

Dave:

Right, and certainly this is not going to lead them to salvation, they don’t even know they are lost, and anything goes.Tom, it is symptomatic, of course, of the situation of the United Church of Canada, it’s been apostate for many years, they don’t go by the Bible.

Tom:

Dave, two years ago I was in British Columbia, in Victoria, and I took a picture of the sign outside the United Church of Canada.It started out with yoga, that was the top thing that they were into.Then they had dancing, then they had a whole list of things.Another cathedral there had a labyrinth prayer design in their courtyard, which amazingly was sponsored in part by the country of Canada.

Dave:

Tom, can I say it again?I was having a debate—this is 7 years ago now—on the radio with a Muslim in Washington D. C., and he was saying Islam was peace, etc., etc., all this nonsense, and I said, look, you want to make up a religion? go ahead, invent any religion you want, but you cannot call it Islam.Islam has its scriptures, it has its founding prophet, it has its successors to the prophet, it has the hadith, the sayings of Muhammad, it has the teachings of Muhammad, it has a history for 1400 years almost.You can’t just make up a religion and call it Islam.And then I said, I say the same thing to those who call themselves Christians, You want to invent a religion? Go ahead, invent any religion you want, but don’t you dare call it Christianity unless you follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, and follow what His Word says, and you follow His way of salvation and believe in Him as He portrays Himself in the pages of Scripture, and you know, in your own conscience.Tom, these people have abandoned everything.They are playing some kind of a religious game.There’s no concern about who goes to heaven or who goes to hell, they don’t even believe in that.They are like the rabbis in Jesus’ day.In Matthew 23, Jesus denounced them, He said: “ You scoundrels, you stand in the way of those who would go into heaven.Not only don’t you enter in but you stand in the way of others who would.”And this is, of course, a little bit different, you set up a system of religion so complex that it would take a lawyer to unravel it, and you are the only ones who can interpret it, therefore they have to come to you, they are at your mercy.But these people have destroyed everything and now who cares?Just come along to our church and we’ll give you what you want.But it’s all a part of the broad road to destruction.

Tom:

And it’s a dance by marketing, Dave, by ad agencies and so on, and here they’ve turned 10.5 million dollars over to an ad agency to now present Jesus.

Dave:

An ad agency that doesn’t know the first thing about Jesus.

Tom:

No, no, whatever your product is they will sell.But Dave, there is another interesting twist here.The idea is that the people they are trying to attract are not interested in church, but they love Jesus, Jesus is okay, but the church is wrong.So they give them a Jesus so far removed from the Scriptures that it’s a caricature, this is a bobble head, this is insane.

Dave:

And it’s evil, and they will be rewarded by God for it.