First they ask for your prayers;
then they go for your cash
I awakened early on a recent Sunday, and
since the newspaper had not arrived, I decided to torture myself
and watch one of the early morning religious shows on television. I watched a sickly array of preachers who
were working the insomniacs and the infirm, trying to extract
a lot of money. I began to notice a pattern that cannot be denied.
It is a reliable trick that many preachers have used. But now
I seek to expose this twisted approach to God's work. Every preacher that morning had the same
approach. They would commence preaching a gospel that focused
on their particular mission. Near the end of their programs, they
would implore viewers to pray. This request would go on for up
to 20 seconds. Finally, they would start asking for money,
which would take three or four minutes - an eternity in television
time. But that doesn't matter. What really matters to these TV
preachers is to keep their ministry going on forever or, as they
tell viewers, God will not be pleased. When this has all been said, many viewers
find their wallets or checkbooks and send off big donations to
the ministry of their choice. When a television preacher enters your living
room at 5 in the morning, and he's talking about starving babies
in Africa or begging for money to send food Indonesia - and your
check book is resting on the coffee table inches away - that's
frightening. You have no excuse but to give. With television, it's as if the preacher
is dripping beads of perspiration onto your checkbook, and you're
left writhing in the easy chair, feeling guilty about being alive. But that isn't what bothers me. I'm agitated
by the sequence of events as they are played out in television
Christianity. Let me explain. When I turned to one final
channel, it was to the ministry of a well-known preacher. He had
a middle-aged couple on the show - I call it that because it's
more about entertainment than God's work - who were talking about
a childhood disease that had devastated the life of their child.
Suddenly, the famous preacher asked the couple, "What can
we do?" But the question didn't mean that the famous
preacher was going to do anything. Rather, it meant "What
can you do?" The woman in the couple answered. "PRAY!
That's the most important. We want and need your prayers,"
she said. "And we need your support." But "support" means something
different to you and me than to the couple on television. And
sure enough, next came the plea for money. That's right, the very
money we have worked so hard to earn and scrimp and save - that
filthy coinage - we are asked to send to these strangers. But, again, it's the the sequence of the
begging that interests me. First, comes the request for prayer,
the microphone that connects us to God. The insinuation is the
Almighty wouldn't know what to do if we failed to pray. The second request? Send money. And there
we are, sitting in our pajamas, crawling around the darkened family
room looking for our wallets. It reminds me of how some preachers responded
to letters from another congregation offering them a job with
a $10,000 salary, car allowance as requested, two weeks' vacation
and all the leftover coffee from the church potluck dinners. The reverend might think: "This offer
stinks. The salary is too low. I'll have to fight for every cent
on the car allowance. The short vacation would kill me, and I
can't possibly drink all that horrible coffee." But in his reply letter to the congregation,
the minister is certain to mention prayer, even though the material
issues are foremost on his mind. First we talk about prayer, and then we
talk about money. Wouldn't it be better if people were honest
from the start? "Listen people, we need money, lots
of money, and then we need people to pray." Works for me.
Clark D. Morphew
Posted For April 1, 2000