If All Else Fails

According to a BBC News report of 2004/09/26 (yes, those Brits always get the date backwards like that), "The Church of England is launching a pilot scheme to attract people back to church - by offering a bar of fair trade chocolate to every worshipper."

Giving away candy to get people back to church? Maybe it’s been tried but I just haven’t heard of it. The report goes on to say, "About 70,000 invitations have been sent to former churchgoers in Manchester."

It must cost a lot of money to send 70,000 invitations and to have "fair trade" chocolate on hand just in case any of those 70,000 show up to collect. One of the reasons it will be expensive is that "fair trade" chocolate is candy for which guilt-ridden liberals pay more than the market price. Chocolate is not exactly cheap to start with, and with that "fair trade" surcharge added on, it’s surely quite expensive.

The BBC report also says, "The Church of England . . . is also asking people who have given up the church to suggest what might encourage them back."

This reminds me of an idea I had years ago when people kept dreaming up gimmicks to get people to come to church. Why not just set aside the postage for 70,000 invitations and the thousands of pounds (hey, they’re British, so they won’t be using dollars) and just give cash pay-outs to people who attend church. I bet a lot of people would come to church for cash.

Of course, there are some dangers, as there are with any give-away program. For example, unless you want to pay all the people who already show up regularly, you are going to have to establish some conditions. Let’s say you will only be paid for coming to church if you haven’t been there for a year or more. But oops, that might encourage people to drop out just long enough to come back and get the cash prize.

How long could you pay these people for coming to church without depleting all your funds? If you don’t keep paying these people, would they keep coming? Would they perhaps be stupid enough to put more into the collection plate than they were being paid to attend? There is just no end of problems for my scheme, which is probably why it has never been tried.

I’ve even had a thought about helping solve that problem. You could have numbered offering envelopes available which these reluctant church goers could use to make contributions to the church. Then, at the end of the meeting, you have a weekly drawing for a cash prize for one or two lucky givers. I know people like to do that, because they have riverboats in Indiana and a whole city in Nevada devoted to it.

To apply the brilliant idea of the Church of England to our situation, my guess is that if you offered, say, $50.00 to Americans to attend church, you might get several takers at a typical congregation. They would probably be the lower-income people, but there are plenty of us out there.

But I don’t know if Americans would come just for a piece of chocolate, even if it were "fair trade" chocolate. Does "fair trade" chocolate taste better than regular at-the-market-price chocolate?

Bishop McCulloch told a BBC radio program that the chocolate was not a gimmick. He said, "It’s not an ordinary kind of chocolate fondant. This is a piece of fair trade chocolate." This is supposed to show people that the Church of England is "trying to bring justice and fair trade across the world."

As long as you are "trying to bring justice and fair trade across the world" then giving away chocolate to tempt people to attend church is definitely not a gimmick.

O.K. But I still think my cash prizes idea would work better.