Willow Creek Lights The Fire for Bruce Almighty Sequel

Willow Creek Church Association is putting up $50,000 to encourage "random acts of kindness" within member churches as promotion for the upcoming "Bruce Almighty" sequel,"Evan Almighty". According to WCA website, "The churches will be charged with creatively distributing the funds and going out into the community doing acts of kindness. Maybe it's buying everyone's coffee at Starbucks for an hour. ( Ed.note: Starbucks has publicly expressed support for the homosexual lifestyle.) The campaign ties into the theme of the upcoming movie "Evan Almighty," which comes out in June and focuses on obedience to God and doing acts of random kindness to others."

Why would a church sponsor a campaign to help roll out a secular, PG-rated movie with "mild rude humor" and presents a mockery of God? One need look no farther than the marketing technique of "PYROMARKETING, The Four-Step Strategy to Ignite Customer Evangelists and Keep Them for Life. PyroMarketing principles deliver powerful results over the long-term and for less money. Illustrated with case studies including The Purpose-Driven Life, one of the bestselling books of all time, and the breakaway phenomenon The Passion of Christ."

In 2005, Tim Challes chronicled and collaborated how the author, Greg Stielstra worked as Senior Marketing Director at Zondervan, and participated in the marketing development of The Purpose Driven Life & the associated 40 Day church programs. Challes presented disturbing information that indicated that Rick Warren exerted pressure on Zondervan, attempting to prevent Stielstra from using his Purpose Life marketing experience in his upcoming book. Warren apparently did not want the success of PDL to be publicly attributed to a marketing plan. Stielstra's book was eventually published by HarperCollins Publishing,the parent company of Zondervan.

Certainly, Willow Creek isn't giving away $50,000 as a random act of kindness toward Hollywood. One can only imagine what rewards any organization would receive from Hollywood by pyromarketing a new movie release to their thousands of members across the country. Is "Evan Almighty" coming to your church this June?