Rich Bowen commented on a local church holding a festival in a local park as outreach. His comments hit home pretty hard with me because just recently I helped organise a festival for my local church.

In other words, the primary purpose of advertising is to lie to the customer in order to get them to find your product attractive. Evangelism is advertising. Advertising is all about getting a message out about something, it doesn’t have to be a product and it doesn’t have to be a lie. For instance, political advertisements don’t have a product, they advertise a philosphy and encourage you to take action about it. Major product recalls often happen through advertisements, they’re not selling you something, and they’re entirely factual. Just because world is so full of false and misleading advertising doesn’t mean that every advertisement is just out to lie to you and get you to buy something.

So … if you throw a party in the park, give people free food, free live music, free cotton candy, and an amusement park atmosphere, then maybe people will attend your church? Well, maybe, but that’s only half of the story. When they get to church, the next thing that you do is to tell them not-quite-true things about God, in order to make them stay. I think it’s a very big jump to go from “this church advertises themselves with a party in the park” to “this church says not-quite-true things about God”. There are many churches who advertise and still preach the word of God accurately and there are many churches who don’t advertise and preach the word of God very inaccurately.

Ok, I do readily admit that I’m being truly unfair to Life Bridge. I don’t know anything about them. And after reading their web site, I don’t know anything more about them. They appear to believe mostly good things. I’d have to agree that this is extremely unfair to Life Bridge. Why is it that in this world the thought of a bunch of people coming together to do something good in the community means they must be scheming something and up to no good? Why does there have to be something bad lurking behind the scenes all the time?

And they did seem like *very* nice people. But I have to wonder at their motivation in spending a couple thousand dollars to put on a party in the park, give out tshirts and frisbees, and then invite people to church, while not saying one word about what the church is about. Because it makes them seem like *very* nice people. It makes you realize that “church people” aren’t scary and they’re not obssessed with pushing religion down your throat. They’re normal people who are quite approachable. mostly they throw that party because:

I am inclined, however, to go there some week, just to see if my prejudices have any basis in fact. If you hold a prayer vigil or a bible study and invite everyone, people from your church will come along and you’ll deepen your faith – but you won’t reach anyone who doesn’t already believe. If you live out the spirit of Christianity by loving one another and letting your light shine as a beacon for all to see, then and only then, will you start really reaching people. From the Gospel of Matthew:

5:14 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. 5:15 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. 5:16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. That’s why they went out in public and brought joy to people without asking for anything in return. They didn’t grab you and preach to you because that would have been expecting something in return – selling a product as such. Instead they let you and your child come in, enjoy yourself, spend some quality family time together and then invited you to come along to learn about Christianity and God for yourself, when you’re ready – no strings attached.