ROCKY!

Adapted from "Monday Morning Insight" for pastors:

Headline: Sylvester Stallone's Conference Call with Pastors

Recently pastors were invited to take part in an unusual phone conference call: with 'Sylvester Stallone (as in, “Rocky”).

An email that went out to pastors: "Sylvester Stallone cordially invites you, as a leader in the faith and family community, to JOIN HIM ON THE PHONE LIVE this Friday. Sly would like to take some time to talk to you about the faith and values that run through the Rocky films, and share with you about his upcoming movie, Rocky Balboa, the final chapter in the Rocky story."

Question: Why is Sylvester Stallone doing a conference call with pastors?

The company behind this promotion is called, "Motive Marketing." Motive is taking advantage of the syncretistic state of American Evangelical “Christianity” by using Christians and churches to promote movies. They encourage pastors to preach sermons based on their movies and encourage churches to have events based on the movies -- with the goal of the studio selling lots of tickets and making lots of money.

Motive is very proud of their success marketing the Passion of the Christ (about the Bible) and Chronicles of Narnia (based on the Bible). So now they are going to go ahead try the same “let’s make the Christians do our work” method for a movie that makes no claim to have a Biblical basis.

Does this bother anybody?

I got a call from a friend of mine who lives in Florida. She is a photographer and was invited to a "sneak peek" of Narnia last year. She called me repulsed. She said it was a good movie... but she felt so manipulated. Later, I got packets of material on how to use the movie to create a sermon series. (Complete with sermon outlines!)

Okay, maybe.

But Rocky? (Yo! Magdalene!)

The thing is, this campaign will probably be successful. And I will not be at all surprised to get a packet of sermon outlines and glossy postcard from a church advertising their new 4-week series: “Rocky: The Heart of a Champion.”

But....

What are your thoughts?

When do we "use" culture and when does culture use us?