The final project for my Romans class this past semester was to take an evangelistic tool and evaluate it in light of our study of Romans and honor-shame cultures. I chose to evaluate Christian Aid Ministries’ Billboard Evangelism effort. I apologize if any of you work with this ministry. Take it as a constructive criticism intended to help and not tear down. 😀
Introduction to Christian Aid Ministries Billboard Evangelism
Christian Aid Ministries (CAM) is one of the largest Christian relief organizations in the world. Their primary focus is on providing relief for areas of the world that have been damaged through weather related phenomena or political turmoil. A secondary area of focus, however, has been church planting and evangelism. Particularly, Billboard Evangelism.
The purpose for doing Christian Aid Ministries Billboard Evangelism is “to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins…” (Acts 26:18). Billboard Evangelism, as noted from the title, has a simple method of evangelizing: posting billboards along major roads across the United States. Each billboard has a telephone number at the bottom which people can call if they are interested in discussing faith further. CAM has posted 1,479 billboards across the US, and they receive an average of 282 calls per day with an estimated 26.5 million viewers per day. This venture costs CAM roughly $4.7 million a year.[1]
With a reach of nearly 30 million viewers per day and almost $5 million being poured into this effort on an annual basis, one might ask why they only generate 282 calls a day. That’s a mere 0.001% conversion view-to-call conversion rate. Is this a proper stewarding of resources? Could they change anything to generate even more calls?
The following is an analysis of CAM’s Billboard Evangelism effort. First, I will analyze the contextualization of the messages on the billboards for North American audiences. Second, I will analyze Billboard Evangelism in light of the book of Romans followed with a look at how suitable Christian Aid Ministries’ Billboard Evangelism is for Honor-Shame contexts. I will conclude this analysis with two specific ideas for how Billboard Evangelism could improve its efforts and likely see better results…
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