It’s All “Creative” Until Someone Gets Sued

Ahhh…Easter.  As is the case with many churches, we did our best to get the word out and let people of our community know that we exist, that we’re having worship services on Easter morning and that we’d love for them to consider making an appearance at our place.  This has become the norm…and I embrace it to some extent.

Some churches put a twist on the basic invite/publicity thing–they utilize popular TV shows or movies as a platform for advertising their next sermon series.  This Easter…in our area, I saw the following themed sermon series’ promoted in one form or another:

1 “Lost” (sub-titled…”Still Haven’t found what you’re looking for?”)
1 “Deal or No Deal”
2 “Desperate Houselives” (of course, they’ve changed it to “households” to be clever)
3 “Heroes” (the themes of these series varied too much to mention)
* and while it didn’t happen this Easter, I’m waiting for someone to do the “smarter than a 5th grader” theme soon where they use the 5th grade Sunday School class on stage.  But I digress…

Using TV as a jumping point for a new sermon series is common for many churches.  In addition, most of these churches do very little to hide the branding rip-off from the aforementioned series’.  From what I could tell, all three of the “Heroes” themed sermons simply copied the jpg-file from a Heroes web site and slapped it on as their own. 

This is all fine and good until someone gets sued.  A friend of mine plays in a band that was at a church this weekend that launched a sermon-series based on American Idol (named, American IdolS instead).  They poured a TON of money into this series and expected BIG results.  And man…did they EVER get big results.  Evidently, all their advertising got somebody’s attention.

They received notification from the fine people at Fox that they were to cease the use of the American Idol logo/image, name, etc.  on all publicaiton and media linked to their church.  I’m not sure if they are going to be sued, but from what I understand, Fox has every right to do so (*update 4/23/2007-just found out last week that the church settled things with Fox and all is well…no law suit).  There are several things that probably need to be said regarding this issue:

1.  While it might be easy and convenient to brush this off and say “yeah…but they were probably a big church and Fox (or whomever) would never bother with our little ‘ole church.”  This might be true.  However, I don’t think the church in question is THAT big…definitely not mega-church big. 

Besides…if using somebody else’s branding (or a derivation thereof) is illegal for a large church…then it’s illegal for a small church.  If you want to use somebody else’s property/branding OR alter the blatant rip-off of their property (Desperate Households with obvious logo rip-off), then seek and secure the permission needed.  Otherwise, don’t use it. 

Masking your illegal behavior as being “for the Gospel” just doesn’t fly.  Besides, while you might want people to associate your church with the love that people have for their favorite TV shows…the owners of that TV show probably don’t want to be associated with your church in most cases.

2.  As I’ve said before, I question the point of these sermon themes.  Many times, churches use TV/Movie themed series’ as a way of being “creative” or “innovative”.  I still have yet to hear a good explanation for HOW this is creative or innovative in any way.  From where I’m standing, it’s a cultural rip-off. 

There’s nothing innovative about slapping someone else’s name and logo on your sermon series.  In a sense, it simply shows that we have an idea-deficiency in our churches.  Plus, it’s a type of false advertising.  People might come, expecting to see or hear about their show…and they might get one mention or one clip (probably shown illegally) and then they get a stinkin’ sermon about propitiation.  What’s up with that?

3.  If we really want/need to use cultural themes and branding for our sermons, there ARE options out there.  For instance, there are groups that have done the hard work of securing permission on some movie/TV themes to use in evangelistic campaigns.  Use them freely. 

Some movie and tv show people have actually come to the churches, providing permission in advance.  For instance, this was done with “The Passion of the Christ”, “Rocky Balboa” and “Narnia”.  The owners of these franchises saw a money and marketing outlet by letting Christians use their branding.  Use them freely. 

Finally, you can use cultural phrases and even movie/TV language when it’s not obviously coupled with the actual (or pseudo) logo.  For instance, if you want to do a series called, “The Real World”…just use the language and make sure your logo doesn’t look anything like something that MTV has used.  There are some cultural cliches or phrases that seem to live beyond their origination point.  Heck, some TV shows borrow from the language of popular culture.  Know the difference.

4.  Finally, I have to confess that I shamelessly used TV and Movie themes quite liberally while in youth ministry.  As I look back, I see an attempt on my part to be “relevant” in a way that seems contrived.  The thing is, many of those sermons were probably strong enough to stand on their own without the branding and such. 

Therefore, I wonder how much of the expediency in using other people’s art/creativity was more about my lack of confidence in the Word to stand on its own…or simply laziness for not thinking of our own themes to build the sermons around.  Either way, I wouldn’t do it again and I grieve over having participated in this trend.

When you boil it down, statistics say that pastors spend very little time in the Word of God on a regular basis (outside of sermon prep).  I believe this fact alone speaks to why we rely so much on culture for our “creativity”.  There was a day when the cultural creatives came from the Church of Jesus.  Sadly, that day seems long passed.  Perhaps Jesus will gift us back our creativity when we begin spending more time with the creator and not the creation (TV, Movies, Music, etc.)

Romans 1:24-25 (ESV) 
    “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,  [25] because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.”

UPDATE:  Since it seems that people are still reading this post, an update seemed in order.  The church in question settled the issue with Fox and they did not get sued.  Also, churches are able to use some tv show content/logo art work under some fair-use/spoofing (can’t remember the real term) allowance.  That said, we need to stay above board on these issues and make sure we aren’t relying too much on others’ work when we have the time and/or ability to do our own.