Tens of thousands of ambitious Protestant men have invented Marketing Plans. The successful have generated sufficient cash flows to be among Protestantism’s 43,000 denominations. It is easy to visualize Protestantism. Protestantism, a 43,000 unit trailer park!
Every Marketing Plan that has taken denominational form is one of the trailers in the park!
Each of the trailers is easily moved. That mobility perfectly symbolizes how speedily the doctrines of Protestant denominations may be changed to meet donor demands.
Miraculously, the bizarre complexity of 43,000 Protestant denominations is easily understood.
New units pop up like weeds! The signs change as often as clouds in the sky! Suddenly, whole sections of the 43,000 unit trailer park become “Evangelical”, or “Pentecostal”, or “Prosperity Gospel”, or “Born Again!” as lights in the older “Mainline” section grow dim.
Constant changes make it hard for the Post Office to get donations to the right recipient. “Does this letter go to the Reformed Presbyterian Church or to the United Presbyterian Church?” ask mystified mailmen. “Or, does it go to that new one, The United Reformed Presbyterian Church?”
Further complications become apparent when it is discovered that The United Reformed Presbyterian Church trailer was formerly called “The Full Gospel Little Brown Church in the Dale” and the old sign is still painted on the back!
Each trailer owner glories in being “Independent”. The countless “ministries” have only one universally shared belief:
“We may be eccentric, or worse, but we are not Catholic! The Catholic Church is wrong about a lot of things! Even the fact that it never changes makes it suspect! We don’t want to hear any nonsense about Jesus saying ‘Verily verily I say unto you thou art Peter and on this rock I build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I give you the keys to The Kingdom of Heaven.’
We don’t want any of that around here! This is our trailer park! We have all the keys we want!”
