Campus Crusade Uses Miner Tragedy To Promote “Jesus” Film

October 18, 2010 | Filed under: Brian Magee,Featured Block | Posted by:

When people are in serious trouble and in need of help, should the offering of assistance be coupled with self-promotion? For the people at Campus Crusade for Christ International (CCCI), the answer is apparently yes.

From jesusfilmstore.com

CCCI runs a $45 million yearly enterprise (2009) called the “Jesus Film Project.” Basically, the project shows a movie, Jesus, to as many people as it can. They claim to have translated the film into over 1,000 languages and shown it in every country on the planet since 1979. Their website also claims that “every four seconds, somewhere in the world, another person indicates a decision to follow Christ after watching the ‘JESUS’ film.” People can stream the film online for free, but can’t legally download it. You can, however, buy the DVD.

When the Chilean miners had been trapped underground for weeks, as a form of “help,” CCCI decided that they would send them copies of the audio version of the movie.

As Campus Crusade, God guided us to think about how we could help these men and this was how we took the initiative to contact some churches in the north, leaders and authorities about sending the JESUS audio into the mine. It wasn’t easy in the beginning because of some apathy in the Christian leadership and a lack of a sense of urgency, together with the restrictive control of the rescue team but, God in His sovereignty provided that we were able to gain contact with the daughter and the brother of 1 of the 3 Christians that were trapped there.

They eventually sent MP3 versions of the movie and portions of the Bible to the miners more than a week prior to their rescue,” which was 66 days after they were trapped. This delivery came weeks after CCCI first contacted people 17 days after the ordeal began, trying to get the movie to the miners. Therefore, their “help” arrived well over a month after the initial effort began.

"Jesus Project" T-Shirt from AFP/Getty Images

According to CCCI, they were asked to get the miners special t-shirts. Apparently, seeing another opportunity for self-promotion instead of real help, they had 33 T-shirts sent down to the miners as a “gift” that contained a Bible verse on the back, “Gracias Señor” on the front, and an ad for The Jesus Project on one of the sleeves. Many of the miners wore the T-shirt as the emerged from the rescue shaft, which were seen by unknown millions of people around the world.

When looking at the real problems and situations the miners, their families and rescuers actually faced, it is amazing that a group offering self-promotion of a multi-million dollar enterprise as “help” and “gifts” could get away with it. But, apparently they did. If any corporation had done anything similar, the outcry of exploitation and extreme tackiness would be endless.

Instead of offering real help to the miners and/or their families, CCCI decided that it was best to spend weeks pushing to get the audio of their movie and T-shirts promoting it to the miners. Believers need to ask themselves if this is what Jesus would do.

Related articles:

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  4. PETA’s “Touchdown Jesus” gaffe
  5. Rescued miner sees the light: 10/13/10 atheist cartoon

7 Responses to Campus Crusade Uses Miner Tragedy To Promote “Jesus” Film

  1. avatar jenl1625 October 19, 2010 - 12:36 pm

    "1 of the 3 Christians"? That doesn't sound right. Are we to believe that the rest were atheists or some non-Christian religion? Or is this one of those "Catholics aren't Christians" groups?

    Reply
  2. avatar jschoena October 19, 2010 - 1:20 pm

    Maybe the CCCI could boost their profits even more by watching the obituaries, and take advantage of the emotional state that survivers of fallen solders are in, and set up a booth at their funerals to push their products. Oh, just Christian fallen solders.

    Reply
  3. avatar Gerald Fauske October 20, 2010 - 2:54 pm

    Where was CCI during the storming of the church in Rwanda. Where was CCI during the fires in California and Moscow, where was CCI during the pedophily of the Catholic Church and the children who were scared there? /serious parody of King Theoden's speech on Gondor. (Gondor was fighting for its fantasy movie life in RETURN OF THE KING. In the real world, CCI was selling T-shirts.

    Reply
  4. avatar stayinalive October 20, 2010 - 7:19 pm

    There is no question in my mind that if you were trapped underground and in the dark, half the battle would be spiritual. The struggle to keep hope (and sanity) alive must be intense. Audio clips of the Bible and the story of Jesus–another survivor of a burial!–would be helpful and inspirational. Later, if you were to re-emerge having been helped and inspired by these materials, you might well want to express your gratitude by wearing a T-shirt to proclaim it. This report's attempt to paint CCCI as some sort of self-promoting corporation is cynical to the point of absurdity. I am thankful that CCCI was concerned for the spiritual health of the miners.

    Reply
    • avatar Mike_Daniels October 21, 2010 - 9:05 am

      CCCI asked what they could do, and they were asked to donate shirts. CCCI chose to donate shirts promoting its film. After more than two months underground, I'm not surprised the miners chose to wear clean shirts, no matter what the shirts said.

      If Pepsi had been asked to donate shirts, and the miners emerged wearing the Pepsi logo across their chests, I can only imagine the uproar.

      Reply
  5. avatar geoff October 27, 2010 - 10:39 am

    Yeah thanks for all you who did nothing but sit and watch TV did to help those people in the mine. I saw what those people at CCCI did by sending the video and the T-shirts (upon request). How terrible. They probably all sat around a board room meeting all with all the money just pouring in and said lets see how we can capitalize on these people in a mine. OR Maybe there are some good people in the world who hold to strong beliefs and they wanted to share with people and give hope to people who were in a vary serious situation. So thanks to all who are typing their fifty words of criticism and all the help you were in bringing hope to a difficult situation.

    Reply

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