But this story just turned my stomach for some reason.
Large corporations and even medium sized or small corporations will often put a lot of money into "branding". Branding is a marketing tool. It is all about presenting the right image to the public. The image has to be unique, individual, and consistent. It has to say to a certain extent what you do. Companies hire high priced firms to come up with brands for them. Brands are more than just a logo or letterhead. Its everything that the company does publically and often internally. The "brand" of company X is how the world recognizes them.
The Church has a brand too. We have a style guide, a public relations manual. Unfortunately we have made a crucial mistake with the brand. We allowed it to get watered down and muddied. We lost the consistency that makes a brand work. People don't know what the Church is anymore. What the Church needs is a facelift, not in the sense of rebranding but a recommitment to the original brand.
Every television evangelist with a decorated set and a fancy suite, spouting feel good philosopies dilutes the brand. Every Denomination espousing practices clearly against the Christian credo, (read gay marriage here), dilutes the brand. Its time the church took a stand and said "This is what it means to be a christian." If you don't fit this mold You aren't practicing christianity.
It's not like we don't know what the Brand is. We even have a style guide. It's in 66 books. It's been translated into more languages than any other publication. Its chock full of PR information. It's not even that difficult to understand. We're not talking doctrine or high philosophy here. The brand can really be summed up in one word. "LOVE" God created it, Christ exemplified it, and We are supposed to be living it. As long as the Church sticks to that one Brand then we can be sure people everywhere will know what Christian really means.
So how about you? Do you dilute the brand or strenghten it?
Hundreds maybe thousands of people will be going to see Mel Gibson's the Passion of the Christ on Feb 25. Many of them will be leaving with questions. I sincerely hope that the the Church is ready for them. Every indication is that this film has the capacity to bring people to salvation. My fear however is that the church will do what it has done in the past when presented with the chance for revival. We never capitalize on it. We bring hundreds into the fold then leave them floundering. Jesus didn't just say go out and save people. He said
"go ye into all the world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to observe all things I have commanded you."So if you invite your unsaved friend to see the movie with you this week, and he leaves a changed person, Please don't leave him floundering. Hook him up. Either you disciple him, or if you don't feel adequate to the task find him someone who is. Whatever you do though, don't squander that opportunity.
Wimps come in all kinds of forms. There's the physical wimp (guy/gal can't stand pain of any kind), the emotional wimp (please don't yell at me), the intellectual wimp (please don't threaten my worldview), the social wimp (please accept me into the "IN-Crowd"), and combinations of all four.
Andrea Lewis is an Intellectual/Social Wimp. In her review of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy she betrays her wimpish leanings. The article fairly reeks of an inability to accept that a faithful adaptation of classic literature could possibly be just that (A FAITHFULL adaptation) She seems to think that the story should have been rewritten for modern times to alleviate any pain Wimps like her might feel from viewing it. Peter Jackson did the unforgiveable. He stuck to the script as written by Tolkein. LOTR was based in part on Celtic and German mythologies. The Characters reflect that. But Wimps like Andrea are incapable of seeing anything other than a racial motivation in films like this. The Fear inherent in all Wimps paralyzes their brains. The plain and simple truth is that color shouldn't matter. Whether the hero is white or black or orange and yellow with blue polka-dots and vice versa for the antagonist should make no difference. In fact the only people who notice anymore are the Wimps like Andrea. Makes you wonder if maybe the whole race issue might go away if Wimps like Andrea would just toughen up and accept that we aren't out to get the "Black Man".
We like the film because it was fun to watch. It had action, it was nostalgic, it had romance, it was epic, it was in short, a GREAT Fantasy Film. Period. No other motivation was present. No secret conspiracy to bring racism back to America. Not every Hit can be multicultural. Maybe the LOTR is so good because It transcends race issues. You don't think about their color when you view the movie whether that color is black white yellow or pasty grey (thats golem if you dindn't know).
I was going to post a review of her review but someone already posted a better one than I could write. You can view it here.
This excerpt of a news wire from the Sci Fi Website illustrates how "wussy" our nation has come when it comes to race issues and "Hate Mongering"
"Jewish leaders have been saying for months that any film based on the Gospel accounts of Jesus' life and death risked depicting Jews as Christ-killers and stirring up anti-Semitism, Reuters reported."
Since when has telling the truth become "hate mongering"? The facts of Jesus Death on the cross are historically verifiable. Historical fact should never be avoided on the basis that it might be "offensive". Neither for that matter should recent fact. If we become so touchy that the truth must be avoided then we are too touchy.
I would like to take a moment to demonstrate how applied critical thinking can reveal the truth in the news.
While looking over the Democratic party's weblog "Kicking A**", I came across a link to this article.
The gist of the article is that Citations for EPA violations under the Bush administration have dropped. The conclusion you are encouraged to adopt is that Bush is taking it easy on violators, but is the conclusion the WebLog entry wants you to accept actually valid given the information in the article? After all like they say "The numbers don't lie".
Here are some of the statistics given in the article.
"The monthly average of violation notices since January 2001 has dropped 58 percent compared with the Clinton administration's monthly average."
Administrative fines since January 2001 are down 28 percent, when adjusted for inflation, from Clinton administration levels.
The article then follows with anecdotal evidence from employees who feel they aren't being allowed to do their job, and then finally, Bush spockespeople are quoted as saying they measure success not by citations but by pollution levels.
So given those statistics what are the possible causes? Lower enforcement levels are one possibility certainly. Another however might be there are fewer violators. Neither one can be assumed from the data given. Each would require an assumption. Apparently the Democrats assume that companies aren't churning out less violations. However the assumption isn't supported by the data in the article. It is just an assumption.
Would you have caught it?
In Utah the U.S. recent supreme court ruling on Gay Marriage is being used in support of Polygamy. Read the Newsday article here.
Now I have never been in support of the slippery slope argument for such things. I believe each issue should be examined on it's own merits. That being said however there are several reasons why this is tactic in UTAH is no surprise. Why in this country is it considered perfectly acceptable to use previous court decisions to prove your case? Is the law not enough anymore? We need to rely on the opinions of a few people in a black robe with a gavel? The courts system is supposed to be held in check by the law. The Judges are not supposed to be able to reach a decision outside the "letter" of the law. Now however the letter of the law holds less weight than the opinion of the judge. There is no check and balance there. When the opinion of the Judge is considered over and above the law then nothing holds back a judge except judges in higher courts and nothing acts as a check on the highest court of the land.
This case just serves as an example of how we forgot how one particular branch of the government was supposed to work and the harm that lack of knowledge is doing.