Pass the Gas!
September 3, 2008 by Guest Author
Filed under Principle 01, Principle 02, Principle 04, Principle 06
By Ammon Nelson.
WEST VALLEY CITY, UT | 3 September 2008 | The recent gas price hikes have brought out an interesting phenomenon in some religious communities as attendance in church on Sunday has reportedly dwindled. Some may use this as yet another reason why the government must do something to “fix” the economy, but there is a trend that illustrates some important principles, if we take the time to analyze the situation. Carrie Moore of the Deseret News reports:
A story published earlier this month in The Baytown Sun described how Maranatha Church leaders made the offer to everyone in the community, including non-church participants: show up before any of the church’s 10:45 a.m. Sunday services through July and August for a free raffle ticket. Entrants must be at least 16 years old, and the tickets will be submitted in a drawing to win free gas.
If attendance at church is dwindling, there is a reason for it, and higher gas prices merely serve to accentuate the consequences. It is not the cause of the low attendance. The cause is the Brain Off Conspiracy – people failing to take responsibility for their own value judgments and playing the victim saying, “It’s not my fault. I just can’t afford to come to church. Gas prices are too high.”
Key Points
- While church attendance can and often does help people gain a better relationship with God, it is not necessary and natural that people attend church to do so. It is a made and imagined idea that in order to “get them to Jesus” as one pastor quoted in the article stated, people must attend church. There are millions of people around the world who have close relationships with God, without attending church on Sunday.
- God is the author of prosperity and principles govern – While attending church can help people turn to the author of prosperity and learn about true principles, giving away something for nothing in a raffle creates a false incentive, and gives the idea that the gas is the thing of value, rather than the relationship with God, the clergy and other members of the congregation.
- Agency implies stewardship – the people who fail to attend church on Sunday are merely demonstrating how much they value going to church. Those who attend church on Sunday demonstrate what they value as well. In order to be truly happy, we must first take responsibility for our own value judgments and choices.
- Human Life Value is the source and creator of all Property Value – If people value coming to church more than the cost it takes to get there they will come. By holding a raffle for free gas, it teaches that free gasoline has more potential to make people happy than the friendships gained at church and the message being shared at church. The value of going to church is in the person giving the sermon or teaching the lesson; and the people who are there and share common beliefs.
- Faith—being the principle of action in all intelligent beings—begins with self-interest. The best way to promote something, like church attendance, is to demonstrate how that cause is in the self-interest of those you want to persuade.
Conclusion
Offering raffle tickets for free gas to get people in the pews replaces the intended incentive of helping people improve their relationship with God and true principles with a desire for “free gas.” The value in any religious meeting is in the message being shared and in the association with like minded individuals.
Action Steps:
- Evaluate your motivations for everything you do and see if you do it because you can rationally explain how it is making you a better person, or if there is some other motivation.
- If attendance in a group that you value, like your local church congregation, is low; brainstorm with your leader of ways you could help improve the actual content and substance of the meetings and effectively get the message out to better appeal to individuals’ self-interest to persuade people to attend.
Principles 1 (1, 2, 4, 6)
Sources:
Carrie A. Moore, Empty tank, empty pews? High gas prices lead churches to get creative, Deseret News, July 26, 2008.
Ammon Nelson was born the second of ten children. Raised in West Valley City, he graduated from Granger High School in 1992 and served an LDS mission to the Northeast region of Brazil. He graduated from Salt Lake Community College in 2000 and from the University of Idaho, in Moscow, ID, in 2003. He enjoys discussing philosophy, performing and learning music, and spending time with his family. He currently lives in West Valley City with his wife, the former Heather Mann, and their six children. He works for the Nucor Building Systems of Brigham City, Utah, and has been a part of the FreeCapitalist Project since September 2006.
Ammon–you make some good points here. Church shouldn’t be about raffles and give-aways.
But, important messages often have a hard time reaching their intended audiences effectively. While this move shifts the focus temporarily from God to gas, could it be argued that the church is acting in its own self-interest? Whether it was the right move or not, did they not make a move to attract more people, knowing (or having faith) that the message would speak for itself and that once present, people would see the self-interest in continuing to come?
That’s an interesting question, Matt. “Could it be argued that the church is acting in its own self interest?” Sure it could be argued. Anything can be argued, but is it a rational argument? It’s obvious that the leaders of those churches using this gimmick at least believe that holding a raffle for free gas will benefit their church attendance, and they are probably right that attendance increased while the gimmick lasted. However, I don’t believe that it is a rational belief that holding a raffle will help people see the self-interest in attending church. At best it is a distraction from the real self-interest involved. Holding the raffle merely accentuates the reality of who values what.
The gas has to be paid for by some individual. That someone providing the gas is evidencing that they value what they are receiving (people attending church) more than what they are giving (the “free” gas). The people receiving the raffle tickets are evidencing that they value what they are receiving (the chance to win “free” gas) more than what they are giving (attending church). If attendance is low, it is not because there were not enough gimmicks to get people in the pews. It is because there was a lack of value being provided to the people who choose not to be in the pews.
Having a gimmick of any kind to get people to do waht you want them to do, does not, by itself, make doing that thing more valuable to them. If the gimmick works, it is the substance of the gimmick that they value. There would have to be either a material change to the individuals perspective or to the nature of what you want them to do in order for there to be real self-interest. Neither of these things happens merely by holding a raffle, or any other gimmick. A gimmick is by its very nature temporary, and the perceived self-interest will disappear with the gimmick.
Yes, there is a chance that you can convince them, once you get them there, that continuing to come is in their self-inerest, but that is a completely separate issue from the gimmick. A lack of attendance is evidence of a lack of motivation to attend. A temporary motivation is no substitute for a true motivation. Find out why people are not coming and fix that, then if you want to use a gimmick to get them to come and see the change, you have a solution.
Incedentally, it seems to me that the reason attendance is low cannot be because they can’t afford gas, or you wouldn’t get them there by offering a chance to win free gas. If they truly can’t afford the gas, they wouldn’t have the gas to come and receive the raffle ticket.
What do you think?
Ammon,
Great thoughts. Let’s remove the church element for a minute. Let’s take the conversation to a car lot. Let’s presume that I’m in the market for a car, know basically what I want, and am ready to make a move. Let’s say that 2 lots have the car I want at equal pricing. Is it ‘gimmicky’ for one of the lots to offer me a free amount of gas to entice me to make my purchase there? Obviously, it’s not a completely parallet argument. But my point is two-fold. 1. If I wasn’t already in the market for a car (or religion) it is unlikely that a chance at free gas is going to motivate me enough to come up with a way to pay for the new car (which completely supports your point). 2. However, if I am in the market for a car, added values, incentives, or gimmicks may be what draws me to purchase from a certain lot.
I think the hope of the churches may be to attract fresh sinners and set them aright. It is more likely that this kind of stunt will simply bring them parishoners from other churches, and ultimately not bring any new followers to the ideas of Christianity.
To bribe or not to bribe…
It is inherently WRONG for the leadership of a church to create extra incentives to bring in worshipers? This depends on your agreed-upon standards for right and wrong. I’m assuming in the case of Christian churches, we’re using the New Testament as the agreed-upon standard.
Is it inherently wrong to prohibit anyone from any transaction if the transaction does not exercise force in any form? Yes.
Is it inherently wrong to judge individuals’ free exchange between two self-interested parties? Yes.
I like the way you started this article, Ammon. There are people all around us demanding the government “fix” problems that make our lives difficult. They’re always looking for new justifications to present as support for their perspective. They appeal many times like beggars- to our hearts for submission. But the necessary fact is that the government has no right to intervene in any free-market transaction for any reason other than force/deception.
Should the government “bail out” the churchgoers? –no.
Should it protect their right to worship how they see fit? –yes.
Is it my of my business if a church creates a transaction that I don’t agree with? –Only when I’m deciding whether or not to exchange with them; otherwise, –NO.
Thank you Ammon and Matt for creating this dialogue. You’ve created a lot of value for me today.
–Brad
Matt-
The difference is in the type of business in question. A car dealership is selling a product, a church is “selling” attendance. A car dealership, or any other business selling products is not so much interested in people attending anything, so much as selling their product. A gimmick is effective for them because the temporary nature of a gimmick does not substitute for, but enhances the self interest of those that come.
A church or similar attendance based organization is mostly interested in keeping people coming. If attendance is diminishing, it is because there is a lack of value creation. A gimmick does not change the value creation of what is really being “sold.” Once the gimmick goes away, the problem which caused the dwindling attendance in the first place would still be there.
Brad-
Thank you for your comments. You make some important points about government.
For the record, I’d like to point out that I never said that what the churches were doing is wrong, only that it is not based on principle, and will not solve what they are hoping it will solve, based on what was said in the article.
I also disagree with your statement, “Is it inherently wrong to judge individuals’ free exchange between two self-interested parties? Yes.”
I would say that it is imperative to judge the free exchange between two self-interested individuals. It is this which helps us to see the value of exchanging based on self-interest. Now, I will say that it is a violation of principle to judge the individuals who are making the exchange, but that is different than judging the exchange.
Ammon–point well taken. If there is a problem, a gimmick will not solve anything. As you stated, only identifying and remedying the source of the problem can change anything.
I guess my thoughts have been based in the idea that a church has a prescribed message of truth and that the world in general doesn’t seem to care for that message. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the church is lacking in value–it could just mean that the world isn’t even paying attention to that kind of value. There is only so much a church can do to spice up that message without modifying their doctrine. So, a church that wants to get the attention of a distracted world without changing their message or the general delivery of their message will have to be creative in their ‘PR and marketing’. While I don’t think ‘gimmicks’ are going to be as effective as service projects or other visible displays of religion in action, I don’t think they are inherently wrong, either.
Again, my point is not that the Churches are doing anything “wrong,” if by wrong it is meant morally wrong.
It is not my place to judge this. I don’t know the whole situation. They very well could have done something to change their delivery and were just using the gimmick to get people to come see the “new and improved” services at church.
The problem was the message in the article. It portrayed to me the message that gimmicks are a way to use self-interest to “bring people to Christ” and this is simply not true.
Gimmicks are a part of the personality ethic rather than the character ethic. They are a superficial and temporary substitute for real self-interest. They are not wrong and can, like much of the personality ethic, be useful tool in improving one’s Human Life Value. It is just important to recognize them for what they really are.
Ammon,
Great article – I enjoyed your insight and commentary.
Question for you – why is it unprincipled for a church to essentially raffle their services? Not all churches are “non-profit” and so it may be in the pastors self-interest to profit from this form of transaction.
I remember Rick highlighting a story a few months ago about a homeowner using a raffle to sell their home. He remarked that this was a brain-on move in this housing market. So why is it brain-on for a home seller to use a raffle to sell their product but not for someone else to do it for their service in this gasoline market?
Your missing the point. I didn’t say holding a raffle is unprincipled. The church was not raffling their services – religious sermonizing, they are raffling the product of someone else – the gas.
There is nothing unprincipled about raffling the product of someone else either. It is not about the virtues or short-comings of a raffle, or even of a gimmick. It is about trying to solve a character ethic problem with a personality ethic solution.
I don’t, on a purely economic level, see anything wrong with a clergyman raffling his services, if he feels it is in his self-interest to do so. However, any Christian clergyman would have a pretty hard time convincing me that raffling his services to increase his own financial gain is in compliance with the doctrines found in the bible, and consequently a hard sell to convincing me that doing something against his own doctrine is in his self interest as a clergyman.
I also never said that the raffle was brain-off, or brain-on for that matter. Let’s not confuse our own colloquialisms. Being unprincipled is not always brain off, it just won’t necessarily bring the results you think you want. Brain-on and brain-off has to do with how you approach problems, and if you use reason to make decisions or not. Violation of principle is all about cause and effect. If you violate principles, you will experience the consequences. If you comply with principles, you will reap the rewards.
I can conceive of several situations where a raffle would be an excellent and principled way to accomplish many principled ends. As I have already said, a raffle is a gimmick. It is not virtuous or destructive in and of itself. It’s just a superficial, cosmetic solution for an internal problem.
In my point of view, raffling off gas is not valuable enough to get me to exchange my time and possibly money by attending his church either.
Point well taken on the difference between being brain-off and unprincipled.
Your article and explaination appears to line up with my recent realization that politicians such as Obama and McCain aren’t the brain-off ones when they contradict themselves in all of their political offerings. No, it is us, the citizens and voters, who are brain-off when we take the bait and believe that they can accomplish everything they promise even though it violates principle.
Jeremy said,
“… it is us, the citizens and voters, who are brain-off when we take the bait and believe that they can accomplish everything they promise …”
I would alter it to say,
“… it is us, the citizens and voters, who are brain-off when we take the bait and believe that they can accomplish PRETTY MUCH ANYthing they promise …” When you are referring to Obama and McCain.
I’m in complete agreement with your clarification…
This is an interesting article. I agree with the points Ammon has made. It is not unprincipled what is going on, I just don’t think it will serve a long time purpose. People who value going to church will come regardless of the “incentive” that is offered. I especially like the point that was brought up earlier, if you can’t afford the gas to come, then how do you get there for the raffle ticket? That’s kind of taking a gamble I guess, if you don’t win, you just gambled the cost it took you to get there if you weren’t already attending.
People would be still traviling to church if they new that money was an idea, something made and imagined. This is a perfect example of others believing in scarcity. With the right paradigm shift they could have alot more than gas money. Though there are many lessons learned from this article, I feel this is an important one.