Madre's Missives

Inadvertent and Occasionally Intentional Thoughts

Ring a Ding Ding - Jesus calling...

Posted On: November 24th, 2007 at 10:33 pm

What do you get when you combine an evangelistic streetcorner preacher with a telephone solicitor?

Hurricane Bible Church in Hurricane, West Virginia is robo-calling 800 people a day with their message of salvation:

"We want to tell you how you can have heaven and know it, and cause true revival in Amer-ica," the voice says. The 90-second message gives Bible quotes and an invitation to pray, and concludes: "God bless you is my prayer."

You can also leave a message after the beep.

Brian Johnson of Milton, a church member since 2005, said curious people occasionally drop by the church after getting a robocall, but he couldn't recall any who had become regular worshippers...

Yet Hage said the church doesn't measure its success by that standard. The simple act of distilling the church's message of salvation into a 90-second phone call can have surprisingly profound effects, from brightening someone's day to convincing people to commit their lives to Christ.

I mean, nothing says, "I care about you as a person and your eternal salvation," more than an anonymous cartoon-illustrated tract on the Four Spiritual Laws left on a public toilet tank or tucked into a random book at the public library. Why not step it up a notch and call people's phones during dinner with an automated recording with the same impersonal information??

Edited on: November 24th, 2007 11:20 pm