No one can miss it - the media are everywhere whether it's bill boards or TV ads, downloads or web site banners, broadsheets or red tops. What the media do affects us deeply, shapes our attitudes, compels our purchases and, moreover has a powerful influence on opinion formers and policy makers who in turn affect us in every aspect of our lives.
So for some time now, Bible Society has been working with the conviction that one of the ways we must work, if we want to make the voice of the Bible heard in our culture and society among people in England and Wales, is to communicate with and through the media. Ultimately, if we want the life giving nourishment of the Bible to find its way back into our nation's soul we need to gain a much more sympathetic hearing with and through those who control the media. We recognise that this is a huge long term campaign. But someone has to start and then start somewhere.One of the ways we've started is to run city wide campaigns using the broadcast media. More of that in a moment. First, however, I need to make it clear that we always do this with and for the churches. We only operate with the invitation and co-operation of the churches. We recognise that all we can possibly do is for the Bible to become a blip on ordinary people's mental radar for a few weeks. But in that time-window, working with the churches, we hope we can create an opportunity for them to go on working in a more effective culture facing way. We see our campaigning as one way to prepare the culture to meet the churches - hopefully in a more open and positive way.
Already we have been involved in city wide campaigns in Nottingham and Bristol. Each time, but in a different way, we have related our campaigns to East Enders - one of the most popular TV soaps. We used vivid images on large billboards, bus shelters, inside and outside buses and elsewhere too. We backed this up with local radio ads and ambient media. How did this East Enders link work? Well, whatever you may think to East Enders, it is dealing with fundamental human issues, the struggles in relationships, sometimes moral dilemmas and always it's gripping stuff. So first we got people engaged with the images and questions relating to East Enders (the 'teaser' phase) and then with a second wave of posters (the 'reveal' phase), showed that there was a fascinating link to the Bible -the Bible was more relevant to life's challenges than most people had ever realised. People could also follow this up by exploring biblical stories through a specially prepared booklet or on line.
While all this was going on there were a whole range of activities and events, some provided by Bible Society and some by the churches. Circus might not be the normal way we think about communicating the Bible, but we've done it and done it well. Graffiti is normally frowned upon, but using an advertising lorry and professional artists we have used graffiti to engage people from OAP's to children, with the Bible. Theatre, vibrant and contemporary musicals, debates in council chamber with high ranking officials, film, discussions, story telling, drumming circles and many other approaches have been explored. Altogether this makes a lot of media 'noise' and means we get opportunities on TV, radio and in the press to explain more about what and why we are doing this. In the process we make many friends and professionals who start off suspicious become first fascinated and then good friends.
Afterwards we do research to explore the impact the campaign has made. It is clear that the campaigns have been very memorable and have significantly dented the prejudices that most people have against the Bible.
So now we're off to Greater Manchester - a much bigger mouthful than even Bristol. To be honest, we've been heading for Manchester for a couple of years or more and we have received a very positive welcome and have the support of all kinds of denominations, Christian organisations and groups there. It's very exciting and May-June 2007 is when Greater Manchester will discover the Bible isn't to be written off or forgotten - it's vital for good living in the twenty first century! So what are we doing? Swapping East Enders for Coronation Street was the obvious move - so, guess what? We're NOT doing that!
