I want to be clear from the start – I want the Jesus: All About Life campaign to be a success as much as the next Christian. Jesus is worthy of all glory and honour, and is the saviour and hope of humanity. I desire, along with Christians in Sydney and around the world, for all people to come to know that, and to acknowedge Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. For this reason, I am enthusiastic and supportive of ideas for declaring the good news of Jesus to as many people as possible.

However, I’m disappointed with how the campaign is playing out so far. I know, it’s early days and we’re only in phase 1, but here’s four reasons why I’m feeling disappointed.

Reason #1 – Average (i.e. bad) use of social media

Phase 1 of the campaign is the ‘seeding/viral stage’ (check out JAAL media dates). What does this involve? According to the JAAL website:

“Thank  You  Jesus”  campaign  images  sent  out  via  emails,  Facebook,  Twitter  and  distributed  by  electronic  media.  This  will  build  momentum  and  create  preparation,  awareness and community participant involvement to thank Jesus on line for something that means a lot to them.

Clearly, this phase of the campaign is focusing on the web and associated applications. However, the online presence is pretty basic and unimpressive. The campaign has two websites (jesusallaboutlife.com.au and allaboutlife.com.au) which is confusing, and, whilst neither website is visually impressive, the allaboutlife website is a shocker (see Reason #2). The Twitter updates aren’t particularly inspiring (lots of “Check out www.allaboutlife.com.au and post a message”) and lots of Bible verses – which are great, but not very re-tweetable. There’s only one event listed on the official Facebook page, and only 20 posts on the four discussion forums that have been active in September. The prayer updates are a great use of social media, but these haven’t been updated since July. Finally (on this point), the campaign has been receiving some attention online (particularly in atheist blogs – see full list here), but I haven’t seen much interaction from Christians, responding to people whose attention has been pricked by this campaign. This is such a wasted opportunity – using social media to promote the campaign, but not following up when people notice and respond in-kind to the campaign.

Reason #2 – The ‘Thank you’ Jesus website (and concept) is kitsch

Take a look at the allaboutlife.com.au website. It screams ‘Christian’. Visitors are encouraged to upload a personal ‘thank you Jesus’ photo/image. These are then displayed for others to see, or even print onto a range of merchandise. I noticed on Facebook that people were being encouraged to invite their non-Christian friends to upload an image – personally I’d be hoping my non-Christian friends didn’t come across the site. It just looks daggy and everything (I think) we’re trying to not look like. This is reinforced by many of the trite things people are thanking Jesus for – “my mole”, “hot chips”, “crocs”, “birds that look like they’re wearing pants” and “bubble wrap”. These ‘thank you’ messages have been the subject of ridicule on the 7pm project and Rove (again, see list of media mentions) and in many ways, I don’t blame them.

Reason #3 – The ‘Thank you’ Jesus website is technically unstable

Unless you uploaded a ‘thank you’ message, I can’t imagine why you’d like one printed onto a t-shirt or other merchandise. However, I decided to test this functionality out, and both times I tried I got a (different) error message (e.g. ‘Length cannot be less than zero. Parameter name: length’ and ‘Check that the path is correct and that the domain is in your allowed domains for upload.’). Despite the best de-bugging, error messages are hard to avoid, but it is possible (and recommended) to create custom error messages that make more sense to visitors when they encounter them.

Reason #4 – The ‘Thank you’ Jesus concept is overly simplistic

Perhaps most disappointing is the main concept – thanking Jesus. I’m all for thanking Jesus, and encouraging people to remember that everything good comes from God. But this concept, when promoted to those who don’t know Jesus, opens itself up to big questions that lie not so deep beneath the surface, because, as one person on a blog pointed out:

• Why is there pain?
• Is Jesus only in control of the good and not the bad?
• If Jesus isn’t in control of the bad, why should I be interested in a powerless God?
• If Jesus does have control of the bad, why doesn’t he do something about it?