Reaching Out With Their Messages of Faith

By Tom Heinen, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Feb. 9–The man is sitting, elbows propped on bent knees, face buried in open hands.

He’s larger than life. So, it seems, are his problems.

He’s anonymous, but far from unnoticed — his image and the message “Nothing’s Too Hard for God” appeared on billboards at 11 sites this week as part of an outreach by Assemblies of God churches in Milwaukee, Waukesha and Washington counties.

Their jointly funded $10,000 campaign includes cable-television ads running here through Feb. 24 as 30-second spots on ESPN, MTV and Lifetime Movie Network on Time Warner’s system. A 10-minute video is available on its Digital Channel 1400. And 11 more billboards will go up at different locations next month.

All of this comes from the denomination’s national “Nothing’s Too Hard for God” campaign, in which people are invited to call an 800 number for prayer, advice and referral to a church, or to see longer versions of TV testimonial ads at www.nothingstoohard forGod.org.

The Assemblies of God periodically develops outreach themes at its headquarters in Springfield, Mo., said Zack Searcy, coordinator of the Milwaukee-area outreach and associate pastor of Changing Lives Assembly of God, 4970 S. Swift Ave., Cudahy. Churches can choose whether to use the themes and materials.

This campaign and its videos stress eight topics: no person is beyond forgiveness; no loneliness is too overwhelming; no relationship is too broken; no illness is too difficult; no fear is too great; no financial need is too large; no loss is too devastating; and no addiction is too strong.

“We saw this as an opportunity to really effect change throughout Milwaukee,” said Searcy. “We really thought that this one hit a nerve that past themes haven’t. There are a lot of people in our local area with these eight needs that need to hear this message.”

The TV ads here show testimonies of a man who lived a violent life that led to prison; a couple who thought their relationship was hopelessly broken; and a man who was physically blind.

The video on Channel 1400, a testimony about addiction recovery, is one of the expanded videos from the Web site.

Changing Lives has mailed 17,000 color postcards, one to each residence in Cudahy and South Milwaukee, promoting the campaign and inviting people to the church. Its senior pastor, David Eichler, will preach on one campaign topic each week, starting Sunday at the 10:15 a.m. service. Several other pastors also will do that.

With about 2.8 million members, the Assemblies of God is the nation’s 10th largest denomination. Part of the modern Pentecostal movement, the denomination believes in a literal interpretation of the Bible and the presence of the Holy Spirit working in the lives of believers.

The 23 churches funding the local campaign include 14 in Milwaukee, two in New Berlin, and one each in Brookfield, Cudahy, Germantown, Glendale, Oak Creek, Waukesha and Wauwatosa. Collectively, their average Sunday attendance has grown nearly 20 percent since 2000, going from 6,352 people then to 7,603 in 2007, Searcy said.

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