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No harm in agreeing with 'Dave'

For the better part of the last week, UA students have been mystified by the signs asking "Do you agree with Dave?" Yesterday, students found out that they were not referring to Dave Thomas of Wendy's fame, but a new campaign put on by a number of campus Christian organizations. The interest that this campaign has generated shows that the best way to get people interested in Christian organizations is to make them come to you.

If we're lucky, the organizations involved in this effort will realize that this is a far superior way to get people involved. If they continue to have active recruitment efforts in this vein, as opposed to their normal efforts, they will enjoy a much more positive perception on campus.

As much as students complain about the Christian organizations on campus, there's no way that anyone can object to this campaign. They're not bothering anyone; people are going up to their booth and bothering them. They're not hassling anyone, not going door-to-door, not cornering or intimidating a single student. At worst, it's a well-considered piece of slick advertising.

It almost seems sad that we find it necessary to package religion in this way, to sell it as though it were a product. In general, the failure of Christian groups to be accepted by the campus at large is a result of this approach. They try to package their groups to make them appear as something they are not. It is not instant spiritual gratification. It is not just a social group filled with sing-alongs and weekend retreats. It should be a commitment to a life of spirituality; but this is a hard sell.

Most students feel that organizations such as Campus Crusade for Christ and Wildcats for Christ are aggressive, almost predatory groups. Whether this is true or not, this perception is supported by their active recruitment methods.

This aggressiveness makes the "missionaries" of these groups almost adversaries to most students. For the most part, students' involvement with these groups is limited to trying to keep away from them during freshman year.

It seems that most of the efforts of these groups are wasted. For every person that they actively recruit who goes on to be a devout churchgoer, they turn 10 people off from active Christianity.

People on campus aren't stupid. They understand the basics of Christianity. However, at some time in the past, they have turned away from church. Maybe it was too much effort to go to church and not enough spiritual reward. Maybe they got fed up with what they perceive to be the hypocrisy of the church. No matter why they don't currently attend church, almost everyone on campus has some education in basic Christian theology.

Therefore, they don't need helpful diagrams of the sort that the "Do you agree with Dave?" brochure provides. Describing one diagram, the pamphlet reads "This diagram illustrates that God is holy and man is sinful."

What people need is a compelling reason not to go to church, but to go back to church. These groups are emphasizing the points against them: namely, what is perceived as extremist born-again beliefs.

If they want to recruit people, they need to work with their strengths. By all accounts, the people in these groups enjoy themselves. They provide a social group that, for the most part, avoids drinking, sex and most other kinds of immorality. For some people, this is a positive, and it is to this demographic that the Christian groups should be trying to appeal.

These groups have a positive effect on the community. They give time and money to charity. They help out community service organizations. They do their best to show that young people aren't all hoodlums. In short, they have noble intentions, but they need to learn new ways to bring them to fruition.

Campus groups need to be honest about what devout Christianity entails. It means sacrifices, of time and of effort. It means devoting oneself to trying to be a part of something bigger. Every time that the campus Christian groups set themselves apart from the student population at large, they succeed in marginalizing themselves even further.

All of the rhetoric, all of the selling points can only get in the way of what they are really trying to accomplish.