A UCG member sent me this:
Vik Kubik is literally twitterpated on Twitter right now over the recent ad by UCG that appeared in Times Square. It is the miracle of the century as God opened a door for the world to learn about UCG. It all stemmed from a press release that UCG sent out that it was about to celebrate the coming kingdom of God, October 5-12."
God is an amazing door opener that will cause hundreds of thousands to see this ad and join the one true church. What magical miraculous times we live in! Never has any COG had such publicity!
27 comments:
Vic and UCG are getting ripped a new one on Facebook of this ad. Many, including UCG members, are not happy with the ad.
"God is an amazing door opener that will cause hundreds of thousands to see this ad and join the one true church. What magical miraculous times we live in! Never has any COG had such publicity!"
Bullshit. No one will give a rats ass about some church looking to pick up a few tithe payers.
This is all about their egos.
I can guarantee you that not one single new response will come into United Church of God because of this. No one walking that square cares about some cultish church.
While raging, slurring, false prophets like Gerald Flurry were busy perverting the gospel by replacing it with a satanic “new commission” to lie, steal, destroy, kill, and DIVIDE the church, the UCG's motto of “preaching the gospel, preparing a people” was in fact what HWA had taught was the true purpose of the church in his last book called Mystery of the Ages. Maybe Gerald Flurry should have spent more time reading it and less time editing and changing it.
Nevertheless, the UCG appears to be preparing people either to go back into the world or to go into the Great Tribulation. The UCG appears to want to attract unrepentant, unconverted unbelievers to behave badly so any real members can “show love” to them by tolerating their bad behavior. This is a new, twisted idea that HWA had not taught. HWA had taught that people should put away sin, not put up with it. In contrast, the UCG wants to bring in bad people and get rid of good people. Maybe the UCG's advertisement in Times Square will work and attract some New York muggers to prey on their members. Afterwards, the members can “show love” to the muggers by not pressing charges. If any church members do object, they and their entire extended families can be put out of the church and accused of “not showing any love to anyone.” They would supposedly deserve it for not appreciating all the “worldly affection.”
The UCG was always hoping to play church without taking it too seriously. The idea was to let everyone sin, each in their own way, without being critical or judgmental. The problem is that some people always want to take the sinning to extremes. Just as the UCG did not take God's ways seriously, God does not seem to take the UCG seriously either. All the leftover Tkachies who thought they knew how to grow the church far better than HWA did are not doing well at all in the UCG. The UCG just splits and splinters. Maybe God is not interested in sending the UCG any more good people for it to treat badly. On the other hand, Satan might send the occasional weirdo their way to see what happens.
Confused ... this tweet was October 2016.
This is the classiest, most hip, most promising thing UCG has ever done!
It's going to sting all the way to the gates of hell when it doesn't produce any new members!
Holy pillars of smoke, Batman! This is bigger than Reader's Digest! Must be the end of another 19-year time cycle or something.
Nah, that would have been 2010, or else 2029.
Well, that's another perfectly good piece of baseless speculation predicated upon a bare assertion that isn't panning out. Didn't see that coming.
Let them waste their money on ads that won't attract one new member. That is less money that they have to spend on more effective advertisement, if that exists.
I've been in Times Square. I've eaten there. The New York congregation met just around the corner. I even celebrated New Years Eve there in 1961. I can tell you that some church sponsored ad is the last thing most visitors to Times Square are interested in. They want the bragging rights to having been there as they make their way to some Broadway show.
Allen C. Dexter
Not sure why this is even posted. This is an old display. Look at the dates: October 17 to 24. It's from some other year.
3.51 PM
Good post except the 'HWA taught people to put away sin' part. Rather he taught and encouraged sin. He did this first by teaching the give way, with the responsible members doing the giving and the irresponsible/muggers doing the getting. Second he taught tyranny with his 'government is everything' mantra.
The two main traits of losers is dominate exploit, exploit dominate.
Herb gave the green light to both, while at the same time disarming the victims.
Before you go to bed at night, say out loud ten times 'Herb was a bastard.' Eventually this will remove the brainwashing and delusion.
Gordon is quite right in that the picture is from another year, actually 2016 on the original Tweet. That, of course, opens up the possibility of analyzing the advertising event retrospectively. Each ACOG is looking for the silver bullet which would bring it into prominence, massive attention, and subsequent growth, instantly distinguishing it from the other ACOGs as being the one which has the witness of God behind it.
Apparently, this Times Square ad was not that silver bullet. Obviously, it's easy to become excited while anticipating a positive outcome. A more fulfilling level of excitement would be the one made possible by actual results. Obviously, the second stage failed to ignite.
BB
11.41 PM
October 17 - 24 is last year.
Man,
A Times Square add by a COG would only work when executed by HWA. He would plaster the Wall Street journal (print). Target several websites on financial news. Use repetitive messages like: "Why Kim Jun Un will never destroy the American economy?" (because it would be the germans)
Only when people start asking about (request literature): What organization is sending those interesting messages about the stock market going up, while the USA is under nuclear threat.....? Then and only then an add, branding the Organization sending out that positive message would be put on Times Square and answer that very question.
Then HWA would make a video of the add and include a picture of a funny cat making funny faces near the add at Times Square and put it on you tube. This funny cat would draw millions of viewers online, while at the same time subliminally include the Branding message of said organisation through the add in the picture.
Eventually 3 people from Manhattan would join......and the campaign is paid for.
End of story.
nck
It isn't money spent on advertising that will draw people to God. It is truly showing love one for another that will have the world sitting up and taking notice.
That's why these organizations and self appointed's fail.
"It isn't money spent on advertising that will draw people to God. It is truly showing love one for another that will have the world sitting up and taking notice. That's why these organizations and self appointed's fail."
Well, in all fairness, they fail for a lot of reasons, but their media purchases being ubiquitously ill-thought-out as well as the leadership teaching the opposite of love are not the primary reasons for it.
In fact, both of these failures are symptomatic of their toxic doctrines. But they're financially hidebound to stick to them due to HWA's remarkable ability indoctrinate the people with toxic bullshit who make up their tithepaying constituency. Until they do something about that, it doesn't matter what they do with their media budget, nor does it matter how they treat each other, "the world" isn't going to be sitting up and taking any notice.
And it's just ridiculously naive to think that some corporate version of "truly showing love one for another" will ever cause the marketplace to "sit up and take notice." That's not the kind of thing that has ever typically commanded attention in the history of this planet. Maybe on some exoplanet, perhaps.
Advertising doesn't easily build a brand. That takes publicity. Advertising is what you pay for; publicity is what you pray for. Publicity builds brands and advertising maintains them. This is why growing churches are built on relationships. Relationships provide publicity. A good example of this principle in action is the COG7 in Mexico where it is the fastest growing Church in that country. It is built on relationships.
Building a Church brand into a powerful brand is very difficult because that space in the mind of the consumer is already owned by the Catholic Church and the Protestant biggies. It's like some new ketchup trying to make it big in the Heinz world or a new cola trying to make a mark in the Pepsi and Coke world. I am, of course, speaking as though God doesn't call people.
All the advertising and publicity couldn't save the Edsel for Ford Motor Company. No amount of advertising or publicity can help such a poor "product" as that offered by UCG.
I sent this in because it has now been a year since the church started bragging about it as some miraculous event. Not one single member joined the church because of it. No witness to the world was made. Absolutely NOTHING happened other than the boys in Cincinnati wet their pants in delight.
Gary, somebody is messing with you with this picture.
I saw this come up on my FB news feed this week, dated September 30th, with the Feast dates as October 5-12 of this year. Blue background, not black. Different cars and scene in the foreground. Check it out on Viktor Kubik's FB page--it's a public post.
As for the picture you've got with this article....I call BS, Photoshop, whatever. Whoever sent it to you is lying about it.
Okay, I stand corrected.
I fact-checked my own statement--took a lot of scrolling, but I found the older post on the FB page. October 25, 2016 post, October 6 ad.
They apparently ran an ad again this year, which is the one I saw; my apologies for the confusion!
I guess they figured it was worth it to try again, even with low returns last year.
Still Learning:
I checked Kubik's Twitter feed and he has the above picture posted on October 26, 2016. The other version you are referring to is posted on his Twitter feed September 30, 2017. Either Kubik or corporate UCG is pulling a fast one, or they actually have two different ads appearing in Times Square.
Gordon Feil said:
"I am, of course, speaking as though God doesn't call people."
I think that's a very good question to raise in the context of church media and advertising budgets. Let's just assume for a moment that there are some people who he does, in fact, "call." But does he "call" everyone who decides they want to be a christian? Does it boil down to a battle of wills?
In fact the bible trots out the concept of "predestination," presumably tries to keep people on their toes with the Parable of the Tares, but also introduces other ill-defined concepts like being "chosen" or "elect." Exactly how these things differ from one another, and assuming coherence, relate to one another, has been debated for centuries, and there are two main schools of thought on the issue:
The foreknowledge view suggests that anyone who decides they want to be a christian can be, because god knows ahead of time who will and who won't ultimately be saved anyway, the will of the individual is always in alignment with god's will. Whatever opinion you happen to be of at any given moment is always assumed to be correct, though one's historical correctness about the matter can always be rewritten at will relative to your current opinion. It's sort of a "quantum mechanics" view of one's standing with god.
The other view suggests that god is sovereign, and he decides who he wants to draw unto himself, and he instills the desire to seek him with the hearts and minds of those individuals, so woe unto those who fall away. It's also kind of a cruel view when you consider the Parable of the Tares, because it suggests that maybe he sets up many to play the role of a "Judas." It also could mean that he does nothing to dissuade those who he hasn't called from, for whatever reason, deciding they want to seek a god who is never going to respond to them. It's a little like a university that welcomes all to attend as students, but, assuming you've paid all your tuition and passed all the coursework required for your degree, still, you only find out if the admissions department accepted you four years ago when the diplomas are handed out—or not handed out—as the case may be.
Of course, neither of these views is sufficient to account for everything the bible has to say. The Parable of the Sower is at odds with both schools, necessitating at least one more school of thought.
So, then, acknowledging that whether one is, or indeed even has the potential to become a christian, is an impenetrable black box, how should churches think methodologically about their outreach and media purchases?
Of course, there is a fourth theory which most simply accounts for everything, that god doesn't call anybody at all.
'HWA taught people to put away sin'
Yet, he raped his own daughter. Well, all self-supposed great men consider themselves an exception to the rules that are meant for the rest of us.
Wow Helen,
That requires quite some reflection and pondering.
Imagine that. Arriving at heavens gate since the angels think you met all the requirements. Then Peter looking at the list and saying.....Nope, you're not on the list......
I know of cultures where it was forbidden to speak of "rotten potatoes", since nothing that came of God could be bad. It is the ultimate protestant view.
nck
Well, nck, there are also some Protestants who are so ignorant of Catholicism that they probably believe papacy is when a Catholic woman goes in for her pap smear.
BB
President Kubik revealed during his webcast sermon today (10/7/17) that he walked into a Rotary Club meeting in Estonia during the 2005 Feast and personally invited the club members to attend Feast services right across the hall.
He also admitted no club member showed up.
Maybe UCG needs to borrow someone's course in personal evangelism.
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