BAPTISTS MUST AVOID MARKET EROSION
By James M. Dunn,
Executive Director of Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs

“The devil do have all the slick advertising, don’t he?”

It certainly seems that way. A front-page story recently revealed the dirty backstage shenanigans of “tobacco’s” targeting teens.

We’ve known it. They’ve denied it. Now, there’s no doubt about it.

A major company reported: “Our two major brands, Winston and Salem, show comparative weakness against Marlboro and Kool among these younger smokers.” And advised: “This suggests slow market share erosion for us in the years to come unless the situation is corrected.”

This corporate concern has a parallel in every family of faith I know anything about. It is the eagerness to pass on a sense of spiritual identity, a tradition and a legacy, a cluster of meaningful values to our children and grandchildren.

Cloning? No. Carbon copies? No. More of the Same? I hope not. Most of us hope for growth, better people and a new and improved product.

Yet, whether it is this generation of Jews telling their traditions or Baptists describing our distinctives or Congregationalists caring about their children’s capacity to cope, people with any faith at all want to pass it on.

It dawns on some of us that this seems to be increasingly difficult. In a serious way, we fear “slow market erosion for us in the years to come unless the situation is corrected.”

Smyth and Helwys is publishing a new Vacation Bible School for 1998 titled “Celebrate Freedom.” It is the only, as far as we know, Baptist principles Vacation Bible School (VBS) curriculum.

Many of you know about VBS. When I was a pastor, I happily served as principal each year. President Harry Truman used to tell the “character stories” at the VBS of the First Baptist Church, Washington, D.C. We learned that youngsters heard as much Bible in these two weeks as they did all the rest of the year in Sunday School.

These new materials provide churches with a flexible and exciting way to teach children about Baptist heritage, Baptist principles and Baptist heroes. Why not?

I hope you want youth introduced to Roger Williams, Ann Judson, John Smyth and Thomas Helwys. Summer church school seems an ideal way to help churches meet this need.

This age-graded literature project was launched by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship whose Bruce Prescott says, “Baptists are a distinguished people with distinctive beliefs and practices. We have stories to proudly recount and profound convictions to share with our children.”

The package gathers games, activities, stories, music and projects that help young minds engage in discovery. The whole business has a “nowness” to it in that permission is provided for local churches to reproduce the materials as needed for teachers and learners. This makes it cost effective. Celebrate Freedom is also supported by a web site (www.helwys.com/vbs.html)

. When your young’un says, “Mommy, why do people call us Baptists? What does it mean to be a Baptist?,” don’t whine, do something about it. See that your church is doing something about it. See that your grandchild’s church is doing something about it.

Maybe you’ll find the materials less than perfect. Improve upon them.

Hey! We just have to skip one generation to lose some valuable contributions of our forebears.

Call 1-80\0-747-3016 or write Smyth and Helwys Publishing, 6316 Peake Road, Macon, Ga., 31210-3960.

Don’t let the devil have all the good advertising!

March 1998