Last night while leaving the Cardinals game with thousands upon thousands of other people, many of them families with kids, a mobile billboard advertising a strip club drove by. In fact, I noticed that the truck and trailer modified with large flat areas to create billboards on each side was circling the stadium.

Ok I do understand that for marketing to be effective people have to see it but this is wrong on so many levels. Baseball is a wholesome sport that the entire family can enjoy. It is really sad that a “gentleman’s club” has to ruin the experience as you walk to your car.

When I first started my music ministry many moons ago I learned how impressionable kids are. At the time I dyed my hair bleach blonde. I also smoked cigarettes. We were playing for a youth group at a small church near Lancaster California. After the gig I walked as far away and out of sight as I could to light up and take a puff. When I retuned to the church to tear down my drums; a kid ran up and asked “do you dye your hair blonde?” I responded “yes”. All excited the kid then said “cool, I am going to dye my hair blonde too!” and he ran off.

Right then and there the thought came into my mind if that young boy had seen me smoking; there is a very good chance he would think cigarettes are cool and start smoking! It was a very good wake up call for me and I stopped smoking for the remainder of my music ministry years. More importantly, it clearly was a life lesson in how we must all take the responsibility as Christ followers very serious. People watch us and we affect people mostly by our actions.

Please don’t judge me for smoking while serving the Lord. We all do dumb things and I was fairly new to ministry. Not that being a rookie justifies my being “dumb in a no dumb zone” I am just being real with you. Pastor Matthew Barnett preaches a sermon where he says he would rather have a plumber who is volunteering his time, working hard to fix something yet happens to cuss every once in awhile, then a person who is “perfect” and just wants to pray all day. The point is none of us will ever be perfect but if we allow the Lord to work in and through us; we will get better and we will make a difference. During the 4 to 5 years when I did music ministry we had a positive impact on millions of people!

Look a squirrel! Oh, back to the point which is advertising adult products and service in public purposely outside of a family event such as a baseball game.

I don’t know what can be done to govern this kind of marketing. All I know is when I saw that truck driving around with the soft adult images and the words “Penthouse Club” I got upset. The thing is this kind of advertising is becoming more prevalent!

So what do you think?

Ahh the memories! Below you will find some UTI goodies

don’t – my first music video. Total budget $12 and it received network airplay

when I close my eyes.mp3

waiting so long.mp3

Enjoy

This entry was posted on Monday, August 27th, 2007 at 2:59 am and is filed under Change, Community, Just Me, Leadership, Learning, Life's Lessons, Marketing, Media, My Big Mouth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.