Anyone else having trouble finding Girl Scout Cookies this year? Even with the peanut butter scare I would chance a box of Do-si-dos, but this year I have not had any girls knock on my door or come across a single cookie table set up outside a store. You would figure with the economy and cookie sales down 19% they would encourage the girls to use every avenue available to sell cookies…but apparently not.
I Just read a news story from Ashville, North Carolina about an 8 year-old girl named Wild Freeborn (and I thought the name Bard Letsinger was different) who set a lofty goal of selling 12,000 boxes of cookies.Talk about an ambitious goal. First Wild made a You-Tube video promoting Girl Scout cookies, then she ask her dad if she could use what he did at work (web page design and development) to sell cookies. They created a webpage and networked through Facebook and Twitter. Soon she had 700 orders…and people crying foul. Apparently people in the community, some who do not even have girls in the Girl Scouts, felt threatened by little Wild’s “unconventional efforts” and that she was “suck(ing) the opportunity (for sales) from other girls”. The critics even contacted the local Girl Scout office who told the Freeborn’s to take down the You-Tube video and reiterated the ban on internet sales. Wow!!
Sound familiar? A church starts using new "unconventional efforts" to reach people... like modern music, video, creative teaching techniques, billboards promoting a series on “sex”, etc.. The result, a growing church, people applying biblical principles Monday thru Saturday, marriages healed and people coming to Christ. And do other churches respond with praise and celebrate what God is doing? No, they respond like a bunch of Girl Scout parents who are mad that some other little girl thinking outside the box sold cookies to a bunch of people who they never had a shot of selling cookies to in the first place.
If you are a member of one of those forward thinking churches I applaud you. If you are fulfilling both parts of the Great Commission then you are doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing. Do not let people who are not make you feel that you are the one doing something wrong. Keep it up. Only worry about the status quo churches griping if they ever quit. When they think you are back on the right track, or coming back into the fold, that is when you need to worry.
As for little Wild, they kept the website up because they were only taking orders on line, which does not violate the Girl Scouts prohibition of "selling" the cookies on-line since the delivery and monetary transation took place in person. If they would let her sell cookies over the net I would buy a box of Do-si-dos from her. I am one of those people that the rest of the girls in Wild’s area do not have a chance of reaching. I would risk a little salmonella to help out little Wild reach her goal of 12,000 boxes. Heck I’d even pay for shipping.
