Church Using Sex on Billboards
"At first, I thought it was a porn site thing," said one passerby. ..."You sure a church put that there? I think they need to change the sign," said another passerby. ..."It's a little provocative, but it doesn't bother me any," one driver said.
Source: WKMG Orlando
The church claims to be promoting a series of sermons about "puresex":
"We're giving people the way God created sex for us, and what his intentions for sex are. It seems like the world has lost its value of sex nowadays. STDs are up, divorce is up and we just want to show them God has designed sex. He wants us to have great sex, but he wants us to have it in his parameters," Morro said.
The pastor told WJXT that the billboard campaign has been working for the new church, which started just months ago next to a pizza parlor.
With the recent boost in numbers, he said the church has begun looking to buy land for a new site. "We've had a great turnout at church just from billboards alone -- a few negative comments, but it seems like you do anything outside the box where church is related you're going to have the pros and cons with it," Morro said.
This church is not merely advertising sermons about human sexuality; they are instead using sex to titillate and intrigue potential "customers." There does not appear to be any substantial difference between this and using similar imagery to advertise a TV show with sexual content. Just because the actual sermons may not be graphic or prurient does not mean that the church is not knowingly using sex to sell themselves.
The fact that the church is doing so well helps reinforce the idea that sex really does sell — not just cars and beer, but church sermons as well. It might be incorrect to attribute all the current success to this billboard, but even the church's leaders believe that it has been important. I wonder if any current church members are embarrassed by or uncomfortable with this sort of advertising — or it's obvious success.
Comments
Its fairly obvious. The church needs to evolve to survive. And yet again, as has happened thousands of times in the past, the church is forced to adopt something it railed against just days prior in order to avoid slipping into oblivion.
From spherical planets to star-centere-solar systems to literacy to lightning rods to still-image projectors to pop music and now to hot steamy sex. What will they adopt next in order to survive? ATHEISM!?!?!?
Now for the really fun part–this has gone on in other cities, and is a canned sermon series that pastors (presumably of large, rich churches, because this stuff can *cost*) can buy and present.
Check out this Christian blog, where people are in high dudgeon over it. And Google “pure sex church billboard.”
This makes me laugh because I’m from Orlando. I do think the church looks a bit desperate using this tactic. That said…if sex positivity can enter the church, if even ultra-conservative Christians can be sensual, I’m not totally against that.
Churches don’t evolve - they were DESIGNED!!!
I am a Christian and I am not opposed to the billboards. God created sex to be a beautiful thing. However, as the pastor said, it has limits. God created sex to be an intimate way for a man and wife to express their love for one another. Today sex has become cheap. I pray that this church is able to reach people with the wonderful news of the living Christ.
Next week the church will sponsor an “Orgy for Christ.”
“I am a Christian and I am not opposed to the billboards. God created sex to be a beautiful thing. However, as the pastor said, it has limits. God created sex to be an intimate way for a man and wife to express their love for one another. Today sex has become cheap. I pray that this church is able to reach people with the wonderful news of the living Christ.”
By cheap, do you mean practiced in a way that you do not personally agree with?
This should strike a chord. Conservative evangelicals have to be some of the most sex-obsessed people on the planet. You have to be pretty fixated with sex to want to control it as much as they do.
Organized religion is based on pandering. So, sex is just a variation on an old practice. The advertising should not be a fraud however (fat chance).
Conservative evangelicals have to be some of the most sex-obsessed people on the planet. — Comment by Eric — February 3, 2008 @ 5:22 pm
My experience is that you’re right about this.
Back in the day, when I was a member of a medium-sized Christian church/cult, my church’s pastor decided to run a Bible study series about sex, promising to be blunt and specific (no lie….he was!). Our Bible studies on Wednesday nights generally attracted 70-80 people out of our congregation of perhaps 450-500. However, for that series, it was standing-room-only, even after my ushering crew scoured the building for extra chairs in an attempt to accomodate the overflow crowd. I’d say nearly the entire congregation—and maybe then some—turned out for these studies, which ran for three or four consecutive Wednesdays.
Afterward, when Bible study went back to such trivial topics as salvation and eternal life, our attendance dropped back to its earlier levels.
Maybe my fellow congregants were putting to good use on their Wednesday evenings all the information they’d been so diligent to pick up over the previous 3-4 weeks?
I think it’s pathetic that these adult Christians had to go to a Bible study in order to understand sex.
The obsession about sex is rooted in the fact that all religions are created by the tribal leaders, always elder males. History shows that such men are disproportionately hypocrites with sexual obsessions that they control only with difficulty (look how many televangelists are closet homosexuals / use prostitutes / abuse children / use drugs / steal / etc). They all condemn these practices, while secretly practicing them.
Since they have these repressed urges, they assume others do too. They keep theirs hidden, but must control the tribe by making them illegal, since they assume others share their hypocracy. Since they control the rest of the life of the tribe, they put in controls for the sexual conduct of others that need for themselves.
Sexual control has also always been about male domination of females, and the desire of males to limit female promiscuity (and thereby infidelity of wives to their husbands). Remember, the mother of a child is NEVER in doubt, but the father . . . what man wants to raise the children of another man?
Lastly, the obsession about sex by religionists stems from the jealousy the elderly tribal leaders have for the sexual energy of youth, in part a lament for the loss of their own.