This week, staff from EMI Christian Music Group, Provident Music Group and Word Entertainment, along with volunteers from Belmont University, banded together to to package a record number 427,000 meals for the Minnisota-based non-profit hunger-relief organization, Feed My Starving Children. The meals will be used to feed children in Thailand.
The more than 1,500 volunteers worked in shifts that started at 10:00 AM and ran through 8:00 PM, packaging specially formulated meals in assembly-line fashion. Each FMSC meal provides the key nutrients a child needs to survive and thrive. The number of meals packaged at this event is enough to feed 1,169 children for one year.
Brandon Heath, Francesca Battistelli and Josh Wilson performed over the lunch break.
The volunteer event was billed “Wow Shares,” because the three music labels have for years collaborated to put out and promote the WOW series of compilation projects.
I love that all of these people got together and packaged these meals for kids. I know a lot of people from all of these labels and they’re dedicated, sincere Christians who would do this kind of thing even if their company wasn’t getting any promotion out of it. So please, please understand that what I’m about to say is IN NO WAY a judgement on anyone’s heart or motives.
But I’m not sure how I feel about using service to promote a product. It’s something I think about a lot, and I go back and forth on the subject.

On the one hand, I love that Christian music celebrities are able to use their platforms to bring awareness to a cause or need. I think that these artists are genuinely concerned and active in the cause they represent, and their ability to give a broad voice to a cause ultimately helps the people in need. I can understand when a band goes on tour, for example, and donates a portion of their ticket sales to a charity, or even has someone from the charity join them on tour to speak. I can see how music fans would be willing to listen if more than one of their favorite artists were talking about a ministry or cause.
But when artists band together and do a publicized, coordinated event, I wonder if it doesn’t somehow cheapen the actual service. That staff from these labels, for example, joined together to package meals is a great thing. What they did will help thousands of needy children in Thailand. That they called it something that promotes their WOW product, so that every time the media reports on their service they also promote the product, makes me feel a little icky. I think it takes away from their actual service.
Kind of like when Word artists built a house for Habitat for Humanity a couple years ago. During GMA Week, they had a little pr event and gave the family the keys to their new house while media snapped pics. I felt like they were kind of taking advantage of the woman for a press event.

Then again, every week I watch Ty Pennington hand over keys to a family on “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” after I’ve just watched him promote Sears for an hour. And I don’t have a problem with that, because Sears goes on to use their influence to help other families, without the TV fanfare.
Like I said, I’m on the fence. What do you think? Can Christian music artists tie their product with service and do it without it being a press opp? Does it bother you, or does it help to know what ministries to support? Is there a line that artists can cross, and go from being service-minded to being promotion-minded?