Help or Harm? The Impact of the New Gospel Coalition Campaign

Will the new Gospel Coalition help or harm the cause of Christ in Australia? 

Bill Salier and Akos Balogh from The Gospel Coalition Australia are promoting it. 

Dominic Steele thinks it will do more harm than good and urged The Gospel Coalition to go back to the drawing board. 

Here's a summary of reservations from Dominic and a Christian social media marketer: 

1 Strategy

This campaign focuses on the question of the historicity of Jesus. While this is a typical apologetic question, it is not one that comes up often in conversations when people are weighing up the gospel. Most people accept Jesus as a historical figure, but are asking the question "How is Jesus relevant to me?". This campaign is not speaking to that question at all.

2 Title “Jesus, History’s Biggest Hoax?”

This will either cement or suggest to the majority of viewers that Jesus is a hoax. In general, 1-1.5% of people who see a post on Facebook will click through to the landing page or meaningfully engage. This means if 100 people see the title “Jesus, History’s Biggest Hoax?”, then 98.5% of the audience will just read the headline and move on. 

3 The average video watch time on Facebook is 10 seconds.

This means a significant number of people watch less than 10 seconds. The first 10 seconds of the video does nothing to dispel the notion that Jesus is a hoax or a fairytale. 

4 The video structure encourages natural drop off

While all of the content in the video is relevant to a historical understanding of Jesus, the structure of the video continues to rely on negative questions, where the voice over suggests reasons Christianity may be wrong and then refutes them. 

This fundamentally fails to understand the drop of rate of videos - even if someone makes it to 20 seconds, and hears the first question, “Where the disciples liars?" it is highly likely they won’t stick around for the answer. By using this structure, the immediate result will be that people have the assumption that Jesus is not a verifiable historical figure confirmed.

5 Call to action

The end of this video asks: “Why did hundreds and then thousands come to worship a Jewish criminal?” and then shows a link. There is not a strong reason to click through or even a suggestion as to do next. Even if someone watched the full video, and was convinced that Jesus did die and rise again, there is no reason for them to find out more or explanation of what it means for them personally. 

www.thepastorsheart.net/podcast/helporharm