I love you, Mom!

By John Frost
Goodratings Strategic Service

I saw an amazing thing on Sunday.

Hundreds of millionaire professionals willingly gave up a tool of their trade and replaced it will something that on any other day, in any other circumstance, would subject them to ridicule and harassment from their co-workers.

They wore pink.

Sunday was a special Mother's Day at ballparks across the country as Major League Baseball joined forces to raise money for breast cancer research. The players demonstrated their support by wearing pink wrist bands and using pink bats. Some wore pink batting helmets and pink caps.

If someone had tried to get major league ballplayers to wear pink just for the sake of wearing pink it would have never happened.

But wearing pink wasn't the point. Mom was the point. Sister, wife, daughter, grandmother was the point.

On Mother's Day six years ago our family got up before dawn to fly from a family wedding to our former home of Dallas, Texas, to watch our dear friend and former neighbor Joni throw out the first pitch before a Texas Rangers' game. She, her family, and the entire section of fans we sat with were there to celebrate her surviving breast cancer. And we all wore pink.

Pastor and gifted communicator Steve Brown puts it this way, "Almost anything of any importance is a side benefit of something else. If you're searching for happiness, for instance, you probably won't find it. But if you're doing something else (like serving others), happiness comes along."

Hugh MacLeod says, "At the center of every human soul is the intense longing to be closer to God; an idea that can empathize with that is powerful."

If you'll be clear in communicating your station's "big idea", then which tools to use, in other words which "pink bat", can be chosen based upon it's effectiveness, not based upon someone's personal agenda for pink bats.

What's "the idea" behind your radio station? Is that idea something that is in the center of every human soul? Or are you trying to force your listeners use a pink bat?