Yesterday afternoon I received in the mail this glossy card from a local church advertising their upcoming services. It was professionally done and very slick- but very sad.

The picture above shows the front cover of the card with its obvious allusion to the “Desperate Housewives” show. The reverse side advertised the church’s upcoming sermon series entitled “Desperate Households,” which will run the next four weeks. The first sermon is titled, “Wife Swap”! Of course the sermon will not encourage the practice of wife-swapping. The point is to use this language for its shock value. The sermon on Mothers’ Day is entitled, “Desperate Housewives”

This is really sad. I can see an unbelieving detractor of the church saying, “What a pitiful lot Christians are since their message is so weak that they must pimp and prostitute it so in order to gain a hearing.”

The draw for the church is not slick advertising and shameless accommodation to culture, but the power of the preached word and the credibility of the lives of her members.