The Episcopal Church is pushing a summer media blitz with the message “Put Your Faith To Work” as the centerpiece. The start is an ad saying “Get Closer to God. Slice Carrots.” Read more here.
Now those who know me know that I am the last to pat the institutional church on the back. However, I give them full marks for deciding to advertise in something other than “Episcopal Life” or “The Living Church”. And to go so far as to proclaim a “summer run in public media” is downright 20th-century.
So let’s hope that a few people see these ads and find carrot-slicing inspiring enough to visit an Episcopal Church on Sunday. Well, they better have enough slicers ready! In other words, when we advertise, we’d better be damn sure that what people get is what we said they’d get. “Slicing carrots” means serving the poor, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, things like that. So again, if someone is inspired by a church that says “hey, we feed the hungry”, that person better see hungry people being fed by that church.
It has to do with code and congruity. Lots of churches say “all are welcome”. Yet our experiences of those churches are that not all are welcome. If you look like us, act like us, pray like us, sing like us (not better, please; we have enough insecurity issues as it is), believe the things that we believe, carry suspicions of the same people we are suspicious of, then you are welcome. And even then, no one will talk to you at coffee hour. THAT EVEN HAPPENS HERE AT EMMANUEL, more than I care to admit. So if we say we’re a serving church, we’d better be serving. If we say we’re a welcoming church, we’d better be welcoming. Or we shouldn’t call ourselves a church.
