Christians Begging

October 12, 2009
| 18 Comments

We’re at that time of year again when the Christian radio stations in these parts spend a week or two begging their listeners for money.

I probably blogged about this six months ago, at the last begging season, but it REALLY annoys me so I’m going to do it again!

dogbeggingAs far as I see it, if you’re a listener supported radio station then do two things:

  1. Do what the bible says and ask God, in prayer, for what you need, believing that he will answer
  2. Let your listeners know by saying something like “Hey, we’re listener supported. Please pray about whether or not God wants you to help support us, and if he does, call 555-God-Says-Yes”
  3. Be done with it, get on with your radio broadcasting.

I do realize that you don’t get all your listeners listening at the same time, so once an hour for a couple of days is OK… but that’s it.

If God wants you to be on air then he will call his people to give and one of two things will happen:

  1. They’ll answer God’s call and you’ll have everything you need flooding in
  2. They won’t answer God’s call and you’ll be forced to close – but the failure will be on THEIR heads, not yours. You’ve been faithful, they haven’t.

Instead, however, we get to listen to the stations begging and pleading hour after hour, day after day like they’re not backed by the King of kings and Lord of lords or something.

It really seems like a terribly bad witness to me… and so very ridiculous for children of Almighty God, the Creator of All Things.

So as I was writing this, I got to thinking…

Those stations always say something like “If just 5% of our listeners pledged $20 per month, we’d be fully funded!”

So, I thought about my readers…

My best guestimate is that I have around 120 ‘regular readers’ That includes RSS and email subscriptions, daily visitors etc etc. It may be more, it may be dramatically less – but let’s go with 120 just for fun.

If just 5% of those 120 readers pledged $20 per month to keeping this blog ministry going, that would be 6 people, totaling $120 per month or $1,440 per year.

That would be AWESOME. $1,440 would pay for:

  • A replacement laptop as mine broke today and I’ll need a new one pretty soon or I won’t be able to write the blog any more (I found one that would do the job for $450)
  • My internet connection costs me $35 per month ($420 per year)
  • Anniversary giveaways
  • Hosting
  • Chocolate to keep me awake late at night, when I’m writing
  • … and we would probably still have enough left over for the blog to start sponsoring a child through Compassion or World Vision or something, which would be AMAZING!

Doesn’t even suggesting that sound totally ridiculous?

Yet we accept it from our radio stations. Why is that?

_______________________________________________

If you want to donate to your local Christian radio station, I’m sure they have a website you can donate at, don’t delay, go donate now before you even leave a comment.

If you’d rather donate to your church, that would be TERRIFIC! Just drop the money in the tithe box/bag/tray/bucket this week

If you’d like to sponsor a child, you can do so through Compassion, World Vision, Aunty Katie, or many other organizations.

Or, if I’m wrong and it’s not ridiculous to beg for donations and you’d like to make a donation, one time or recurring, toward this blog, you can do so here:


Faith
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