If you look at any successful business you’ll see that when times get tough the first thing they cut back on is advertising. McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Scientology – all these fine commercial ventures know that new customers bringing additional revenue are of no use at all in times of financial challenge. You've only got to see the commercials during the Saturday morning cartoons to see they've stopped hawking their essential services entirely.
That's because at times like these the economic experts who advised us all to invest in sub-prime mortgages know generating new business is nowhere near as crucial as maintaining executive benefit packages and corporate travel. Companies can survive without customers, but as any of the intelligent young men from Enron could have explained, if those at the top can’t afford holiday homes in Aspen and a personal full-time telephone sanitizer there’s no way any firm is going to remain viable.
Consequently I’ve been reassured to see the Episcopal Church emulating this proven strategy by shafting their entire evangelism program. As many of my Dearly Beloved Sinners will be aware, this was headed by Father Terry Martin; the Communion’s best read blogger, who gave us all the fondly missed Father Jake. So obviously it was in the hands of someone who knows more than a thing or two about reaching out to those beyond our church doors, which in these difficult days meant not closing the program down would have simply been irresponsible. Just ask the brilliant business consultants the Church recently poached from Lehman Brothers.
After all, it’s not as if Jesus said anything about reaching out to people. And didn’t the Great Commission specify that our first priority should be flying to as many doctrinal and polity conferences, directional assessment meetings and prelates’ pow-wows as possible? How dare we contemplate forsaking these in favour of sharing our faith with people who probably aren’t even Christians!
I’m Father Christian and I teach the Bible.
4 comments :
How about we stop throwing quite so many millions down the Lambeth rathole?
That should save enough to take care of our more vulnerable brethren, and might also have the additional benefit of depriving Rowan of some of the funding he is using to shaft us.
You've said it so much better than I. Thanks, Father.
You forgot to mention the wisdom of cutting the only part of the budget that made money--Episcopal Life.
Father Christian. I fear that some of our weaker brethren, those who God calls liberals, may infer from your post that the dignitaries and number crunchers of TEC have acted in an unfair and discriminatory way. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In order to uphold the doctrine of the bléssed free lunch, an inheritance from the apostles that goes all the way back to Paul's collection for the saints in Jerusalem, they selflessly sacrificed (or, to use the correct technical term - "shafted") many other departments and ventures and had to endure the pain of dispatching nearly 40 underlings to Skid Row.
Sometimes, I fear, those of us not chosen by God for high office and higher benefits, do not fully appreciate the pain that our betters have to endure every time they call on the rest of us to make sacrifices.
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