AA Advertising in Oregon!

This past weekend, I was visiting my Dad and the rest of my family for Thanksgiving.

It was a great time.

I met my father's new wife and his new home in Oregon.

Despite the intense cold (at least for a So Cal guy like myself -- 27 degrees Saturday morning! --  the weather was great. No rain or snow, and the family was able to visit the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum.

I met the family pets, and I read a whole bunch
While driving back to the airport, my father turned up the radio on a series of comedians' sketches, including Dave Coulier of Full House fame.

During one of the commercial breaks, an announcer discussed alcoholism, then advertised Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

Such radio announcements are a blatant violation of AA traditions:

Eleven—Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films.

I cannot name or recount the number of times and the number of people whom I have met who announce to anyone listening that they are friends of Bill W., that they are alcoholics, that they work the program.

Sometimes, they crow about the number of  years which they have accumulated, and other people have their AA chips dangling from key chains.

I also heard advertisements for Al-Anon. That program is worse, much worse!

These radio ads, however, are a good sign, in that the AA meetings are having a more difficult time bringing people into the rooms.

I believe that the current economic downturn was severe enough so that men and women would stop looking at themselves, stop trusting in their own efforts, and start trusting that God through Christ alone has all that we need.

"25See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven: 26Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. " (Hebrews 12: 25-26)

Everything that is man-made, including AA, is shaking, so that only what is eternal, Christ and Him Crucified, will last.