It bothers me so much that I have to write this one, if you agree, you will make comment, if you don't just stay silent...for the best of both of us.( I don't need anything else to fuel me along today)
Now before I start let me be very clear on a few things:
1. This is a whinge about the Army system, not individuals. (sorry to all those army puritans)
2. I believe in social justice.
3. I believe that we need to have our social ministries.
4. That I value our social arm ministries BIG TIME.
here's my problem and if there is ever going to be anything that causes me to leave this Army it may probably be this...
this morning when the mail arrived a bulky letter from head office arrived, and at this time of the year it always does, it contained the latest promos dvd's for this years Red Shield Appeal, high quality productions ,equipping us to recruit helpers to collect money to help our social ministries.
I watch TV at nights and the Adverts fly...and in amongst them is the Salvos adds to help us raise money...
Posters, mailouts,TV ads, DVD's, you name it we produce it, and we produce it well....
but all the time what we as God's Army are communicating to this nation at least, is that we want your money... because it will help us help the disadvantaged. a very noble cause and a well respected one at that.
But for the life of me, it bewilders me, that we do not match that kind of PR campaign with a high quality PR campaign that seeks to get people into our corps and churches ??????
I don't get that, never have, and never will ?
doesn't matter how we justify our stuff, what is coming across to "Joe public" is that we want their money and that's about it, oh maybe we are also building more respect into what we do...and that's not a bad thing...it's just that we do nothing for our corps in advertising, nothing at all...NOTHING....and then we sit and gaze at our navels and wonder why our corps and churches are not growing... DUH!!!!!
if we spent the kind of money and effort as we do on attracting the almighty dollar, if we did that for the Kingdom, for our corps, for our churches, for souls...I wonder if we might not start seeing a change around in the trends. I wonder if we started seeing that souls are important as well as feeding the body...
We seem to budget little for the building of the kingdom with souls being saved as a paramount goal... but when it comes to our RED SHIELD APPEAL, FOOTBALL GATES, ETC ETC, there appears never to be a shortage in advertising and production money for that cause. WHY ???
I'm sure to get my fingers slapped for this...but why even slap me for that ?
do we as a movement care for souls anymore ? I'm sure you would say yes and that our serving the disadvantaged is one way...and I agree....However, why can't we find the money to match our PR campaigns with a soul campaign as well ????
would it work ? maybe not ? does it work for the money ? probably yes, we keep doing it.
It bothers me, and it makes me angry, that we spend so much to earn so much.... but we spend so little for the extension of Gods Kingdom, with hard and fast souls being won and assimilated into our corps in every location...
oh how we (corps officers) could do with some swish clever TV campaign that spoke into peoples lounge rooms and told them that God loves them and that the local salvo church up the road is the place to find Him.
Will I do red shield appeal, yes I will try and do my best....
will I tell people about God and this great church we're trying desperately to build ? Yes... totally, but boy , we sure could do with some clever, smart TV campaign and process to bolster that effort as well.
It seems to me, that we should be doing all we can, to do all we do...and that is not just social ministry....
it also feels to me that in this great movement, we seem to leave the work of evangelism to the local corps, who is often at a place of struggle, finance is hard at most corps in our nation, and to find the dollars to get high quality TV adverts is pretty much impossible, but what if it was done corporately like it is for the RSA.. then we could all share in hopefully a positive end result, gee, if bought in 2 or 3 new people to every corps in Australia , we would surely celebrate that, wouldn't we ?
Prayer is the Key
Pray hard, Pray often, just Pray !!!
