During my lifetime the advertising business has increased many times what it was at the time of my birth. Auto travel introduced road-size, outsized, sales boards. Electronics have turned night light into an incessant appeal to buy this or that product. Internet, television and radio are funded by advertising. Periodically these systems have taken a few more seconds here and there from their entertainment to install an increasing number of commercials. A local study revealed that about a quarter of an hour is taken by commercials each hour. We can easily continue this litany in printed materials, in the naming of stadia, and so on and so on. Our nation has become consumer driven. We fail the economy unless we buy more, and create a massive desire – with debt for stuff. At this writing the world is paying a deep price, and has a continuing uncertainty from overspending and waste in consumption related to a number of reasons such as overproduction, competition for money, debt. and inability to sustain the excesses that tax the resources in all – including favorable employment of time from persons at labor. There is little question that advertising has had much to do with the excesses that threaten a system touted to be the best that mankind has ever known. But we argue that decline must call upon better emphases than business as usual.
Churches and denominations have sometimes carried their own advertising campaigns through secular channels. On a large scale this appeared for a time generated by the Mormon Church presenting a lay adherent giving a few sentences of a meaningful and tranquil life, and ending with the statement, I am a Mormon. The whole piece, short and to the point, in good taste, seems to speak to the seriousness of life in a hectic age. It leaves a feeling that one ought to give some time to thinking about God, even if it is not in the context of Mormonism. A Christian university has contracted time on secular television outlets to advance the cause of higher education in a faith context. Use of the internet broadens the evangel purpose and protects the privacy of viewer’s own search. Other institutions have done the same, some on their own radio or other electronic systems. Even registered students take online programs for college credit.
With all this cacophony of presentations for products and services, recently including a tentative foray by faith oriented groups into the commercial world, what are really the circumstances for the advancement of religion? My concern is for biblical Christianity in particular. It ought to be understood that Jesus made it clear that those who followed him were to give their first thought and energies to the advancement of what he gave to the world to be ongoing. From Jesus, the concept of the lostness of mankind was sustained as a major background to what he meant to do, and what he meant for his disciples to do. His last words were to advance this gospel (good news) to the world, and that he maintained ongoing interest. These were the last words of Jesus, fortified in the establishment of the Church, and the introduction of a missionary enterprise. For two thousand years, missionaries have tried to advance this Great Commission of Jesus Christ. For this sacred advertising they have been maligned, made fun of, even lost their devoted lives. Some of them, obviously gifted even as the world perceived giftedness, gave up fame, fortune, even personal fulfillment in the context of accomplishment related to nature, including the here, but not the hereafter. They continue, in great numbers, to advance the gospel. I would not want to belong to a church that did not advance the message of Christ to others, near and far. I would not accept a pastor who did not believe the Christian’s most important life purpose is to advance the redemptive mission of Jesus Christ. World Christians are God’s primary advertisement, and important to civilization’s advance. Where these have gone, under the church or by personal conviction only, there has been concern for the masses, for redemption, better personal lives for all that include love, peace, education, good government in equality, provision for the deprived, family orientation that implies rights for every person, service to mankind whether devout or not, and the meaning of good will. Even with some imperfections, missionary effort has been for great (monumental) benefit for both spiritual and secular systems. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020