Who besides faithful WOFF members has not seen the cute commercials that advertise the CARFAX® service? While a customer is looking over a potential used car for purchase, the “Car-Fox” somehow catches the eyes of the prospective car buyer and prompts then to ask the unwilling car salesman to “Show me the CARFAX®.” To which the car salesman replies with a statement meant to divert the customer to another great “feature” of the car. The advertising is effective. I have used the service in my line of work and for myself when considering the purchase of a used car. The reports include many things such as service records, any reported accidents and mileage verifications. The data is supposed to provide some level of comfort and knowledge about the used car or truck being considered. The reports can be found here www.carfax.com .
This week, it occurred to me, wouldn’t it be helpful to centralize in one place the facts about a church or group that one may be considering joining? Would it have been helpful to know the facts about Word of Faith Fellowship (WOFF) before I slipped among them in 1992? I had heard a vague report from someone who had heard from someone else… but, that did not catch my attention as it should have. What is there was a central location to keep the facts about churches or groups that one could or would join? What would be included?
Okay, there are some websites out there like www.freedomofmind.com and www.factnet.org that would be helpful for ANYONE to check out before joining a church or group. But, who knows about these sites before they or one of their friends ends up getting burned by one of the groups listed? I did not know about these websites, were they even around in 1992? Now that the tool of the Internet is available, what would be or should be included in a report on a church? What would be in the “Church-Facts”?