On the 27th March 2006, more than 60 flags along Commonwealth Avenue leading up to Parliament House, in Canberra were hoisted up where ‘Jesus’ in a large white script printed in a red background could be visible for those driving along the avenue as the ‘Jesus All About Life’ (JAAL) Campaign comes knocking in Canberra.
As the final flag was raised, over 30 church leaders and committee members gathered at Regatta Point to witnessed local Canberra and ACT church leaders Father Chris Kirwin, Bishop George Browning and Reverend Joy Bartholomew joined by Reverend Daniel Willis, CEO Bible Society NSW to raise the flag.
Martin Johnson the co-director of the campaign said the media campaign was aimed at: “Raising the awareness of Jesus and His message but it was up to Christians and local churches to elaborate on it by talking about it and giving away response materials produced by the Bible Society NSW.”
Rob Keating the project manager of the Canberra campaign stated this was the first time the JAAL was used in Canberra where with the involvement of 165 churches and church based organisation would be the key in getting people interested about Jesus and hopefully connecting them to Jesus.
The campaign with the main part being television ads running from March the 6th to ANZAC Day would be supported by: “The flags, banners outside churches, radio and press advertising and posters on the backs of Canberra’s ACTion buses.”
In addition to this, Mr. Keating said the church would also do something for the campaign including: “Hosting an outreach barbeque, a special youth service or training in evangelism – where they were all keen to use the awareness created by the media campaign to talk to their communities about Jesus.
One Canberra church had enrolled 300 people in courses focused on being ‘always prepared to give an answer to everyone who asked to give the reason for the hope they had’. Another church had bought 600 of the ‘Jesus. All about life’ response books for their members to hand out to friends and relatives.
It was reported more people were attending Bible studies and working through questions that non-Christians asked using the campaign’s training manual.
Churches of different denominations in Cooma were letterbox dropping the whole area and taking the opportunity to door knock as well.
All the advertising directs people to either visit a web site www.allaboutlife.com.au or call a 1 300 number to receive a free information pack. In Canberra the churches had a roster of trained counsellors to talk to people who respond.
“To date we had sent out over 220 response packs to people in our region. A good percentage of people were sending emails rather than giving the centre a call. However, the centre was being staffed from 9am to 5pm on week days to take calls. If calls came in after hours a recorded message lets people know if they would like to talk to someone they can do so between these hours,” said Rob.
The interest garnered by this campaign with so many churches signing up was attributed to, as Brent Budarick a seminar leader in the training session conducted by Bible Society NSW in the lead up to the Canberra campaign was: “Churches of all denominations working under the one banner to send a message of Jesus to the community.”
‘Jesus. All about life’ is an initiative of Bible Society NSW. It ran successfully in Adelaide in August, 2005 and plans are in hand to take the campaign to Tasmania, Brisbane and Melbourne over the next few years.