DON'T BLOW UP YOUR CARTOON CHARACTERS OVER THIS ONE!

“...whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel;   which is come unto you, as it is in all the world; ...” (from Colossians 1:5-6)

That verse is a little hard to understand in the King James Version I’m quoting from, but it essentially says, “The Gospel has gone out into all the world”.  You know, you’ve gotta hand it to those first century Christians!   With no television, radio, or internet, they made the Name of Jesus Christ a household word and spread Christianity throughout the Roman Empire and beyond in just a few decades!  

My take on the big hoax or joke or publicity stunt (or whatever you want to call it) that took place in Boston this week may surprise you.  Of course, I can’t condone an act that frightened people, that stopped traffic and subway trains for hours, that caused people to miss doctor appointments, and that cost the taxpayers at least $750,000.  But in the spirit of Jesus’ commendation of the unjust steward in Luke 16, I commend the fact that they got their message out.  Jesus praise of the unjust steward confuses and upsets a lot of people.  But Jesus was saying, “You gotta hand it to the guy.  He’s savvy.  He knows how to get what he wants.  He knows how to get people to do his bidding.  YOU should be so smart.”   What Jesus was saying is that if WE could make use of time, opportunities, and connections with people for GOOD- well, think of what could be accomplished!  So it is with that incident.  Yes, it was a bad thing to do.  But they DID get our attention.  I never heard of that stupid Cartoon Network cartoon think or of those moon inhabitant characters...but I have now!

I’ve got a confession to make.  Well, I guess I’ve got to be careful using that line.... I just can’t think of a more effective line right now... My confession is most people in Framingham have never heard of First Assembly of God of Framingham and most people in Framingham have never heard of Pastor Bob Baril.  If we take the Gospel seriously...if we take Jesus Christ seriously...that’s absolutely WRONG.  It means (in a sense) that my ministry is a failure.  It means (in a more powerful sense) that our church is a failure.   Now, if those guys (all those involved) had used their penchant for art and publicity for GOOD, well, I wonder what might have happened?

Sometimes I think the issue is money.  Our church has always had very little money.  I’ve DREAMED of a slick radio ad campaign the church could run on stations like WBZ and 96.9 FMTalk if money was no object.  If you heard my idea, I think you’d like it.  Grace Church of Dover (an “independent” Catholic Church of mostly former Roman Catholics) has run radio ad campaigns quite successfully.  Unless someone gives our church around $10,000 dedicated to strictly radio advertising, that’s not going to happen.  But, frankly, the even better thing would be each person at our church becoming SO authentic, and SO loving, and SO helpful, and SO generous, and SO friendly, and SO contagious and SO involved in their community that each would attract 5 or 6 people to the church within the next year, and that would actually SO fill our little building that we’d have to go to 2 services.  I wonder HOW  our people could be motivated to do that.

Yet, I feel guilty.  I write a blog.  I write columns for the newspaper.  I go to various community meetings.  I do meet and network with certain people, but I feel my impact is only about 10% of what it really COULD be. Why don’t I make a greater impact?  I don’t know.

A bunch of motley fishermen, radicals, and misfits “turned the world upside down” in the first century.  Why don’t more of us do that today?  No, I’m not advocating violence.  No, I’m not advocating disrupting traffic or closing down hospitals.  But if First Assembly of God of Framingham and Bob Baril were all over the media for something GOOD, frankly I’d be thrilled and I’d be SO happy I’d cry!