A well known college ministry took "Christ" out of their name. They felt it would help them be more effective reaching non-believers.
Some years ago on the campus of Arkansas State University, students complained because a campus Christian group was having events with titles that sounded very "non-Christian". Students complained about their being mis-led into attending these events. The school made a policy that events sponsored by a Christian group had to be labeled as to who was sponsoring it because students had every right to know what they were attending. This came as a result of their event in the campus auditorium entitled, "How to Have Maximum Sex".
Should a Campus ministry's name let students know what it is? Is the name being "vague" more effective or is it deceptive? Lots of questions to ponder there?
Arliss
Ps I still love the names Baptist Collegiate Ministry, Baptist Student Union and Baptist Student Ministry which make up the largest college ministry in America.
I think there are two things to ministries need to consider here. 1. Be honest about who you are: Noone wants to be coerced into attending an event under false pretenses. If you market a product, that's the product you should deliver. Therefore, Ministries need to be honest about who they are instead of manipulated non-believers to events and do something completely different.
ReplyDelete2. Ministries should not make it difficult for un-believers to become believers: This comes from Acts 15:19. Many ministries focus so much on the "inner" crowd, they forget about the people on the "outside" I think Cru took the name out for this reason; so they could reach a demographic that would be immediately turned off by the name of Christ. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds.