Ken Ham answers CT's statement: "funding is slow ... and revenues ... have declined"
The world needs more roller coasters and less arks!
http://rcdb.com/2040.htm?p=23075
(The Shooting Star - Coney Island - Cincinnati OH)
One paragraph written by Ham that caught my eye:
“Meanwhile, people are contacting us—after reading false reports on blogs and websites—and asking if the museum is in trouble. We wonder if there will be many people who may now re-think giving to the evangelistic Ark outreach because of this false information.”
Hopefully getting out in front of this with the response can help, but based on the way Ham describes the interaction between AiG and CT, there is no doubt in my mind that there is very little Christianity left in CT.
We attended the Creation Museum last fall, and on a weekday, and the ticket line inside the doors was at least 30 feet long. There were people everywhere. The cafe was full. The building was full, and a good number of people were touring the botanical gardens and petting zoo.
Those of you who have gone also know how this is a first class operation.
I take what Ham says with a grain of salt. He seems to be getting more prickly with age, not that he has ever really tried to avoid confrontation. His reputation in the home school convention circuit has taken a hit because of his attitude. He may have a point here but I would not blindly accept everything he says.
…seems that’s been tried by someone else…
Of course, he didn’t build an Ark…
He just didn’t pay his taxes.
It is a very large stretch to compare Ken Ham with Kent Hovind. Their ministries are in no way comparable.
The Creation Museum is an outstanding operation. The Gospel message is presented clearly, and a Creationist theory is presented clearly and comprehensively. I wish him and his ministry the best.
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
Safe to say, you have humans involved on all sides of the CT/AiG exchange. And all that that implies.
I wish them all well and appreciate both organizations, though in very different ways.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
I still see this whole operation as an utter waste of money and a distraction from our true calling. To spend $100’s of millions on a museum to support creation boggles my mind.
“…a very large stretch to compare Ken Ham with Kent Hovind. Their ministries are in no way comparable.”
Now there’s a stretch.
If size and money mean anything, Ham succeeded where Hovind failed, but their ministries - their ultimate purpose - is (was, in the case of Hovind) the same.
[dgszweda]I still see this whole operation as an utter waste of money and a distraction from our true calling. To spend $100’s of millions on a museum to support creation boggles my mind.
You must have forgotten about the zip lines ;)
It is interesting that other publications also report declining sales there. Here is another article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/05/creation-museum-zip-lines_n_3391857.html. There are a few links in that article as well.
It appears that they are still reaching their goal of 250,000 people a year (barely) but the trend is very down. In business, the trend is the big concern here.
I would think the price is part of it. The ticket prices are pretty high.
dgszweda, if you actually went to the creation museum, you would find that the museum itself is simply a walk-through gospel tract. Their burden for communicating the gospel is quite evident throughout. They start with Genesis, and walk the guest through creation, the fall, the judgment of the flood, and then the tower of Babel. Then they capstone the tour with a video presentation of the cross of Christ and explain why He came and died for the sins of man. They clearly are reaching out to a generation of people who never went to Sunday School as kids and have little grasp of fundamental elements of the Christian faith. There is nothing hokey or poorly displayed. In my view, they are skillfully presenting the gospel in a way that would connect to this generation, without compromising its message. If you consider that a waste of time and resources, then you are entitled to your view. But I would graciously ask you to consider investigating the Creation Museum a little further and see it you might revise your opinion of it.
[GregH][dgszweda]I still see this whole operation as an utter waste of money and a distraction from our true calling. To spend $100’s of millions on a museum to support creation boggles my mind.
You must have forgotten about the zip lines ;)
It is interesting that other publications also report declining sales there. Here is another article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/05/creation-museum-zip-lines_n_3391857.html. There are a few links in that article as well.
It appears that they are still reaching their goal of 250,000 people a year (barely) but the trend is very down. In business, the trend is the big concern here.
I would think the price is part of it. The ticket prices are pretty high.
In the end this is going to be a niche market, that will see strong upsurge and then fall. Is the homeschool group from California going to go every year? The story hasn’t changed (God still created the world in 6 days and evolution is bad). So I am not sure what they are going to do to drive ticket sales continually year after year. Especially with the concept of 6 day creation, slowly falling off the radar of many Christians as a hot topic.
You are not going to see a more ardent 6 day young earth creationist than me, but we are not going to win any debates on proving creation through science or trying to disprove evolution. A supernatural event performed by a supernatural creator will never be explained by science. The approach of creation science is flawed in so many ways, and some day we may all see this. With that said, we have missionary upon missionary spending 2+ years on deputation trying to raise money as they get the $10-$50 a month donation from each church, and we as Christians go and build this. In some senses this whole thing is almost sacrilegious. Really, have we degraded Noah to the point that we have created a cafe called, “Noah’s Cafe”. Yes, I find some of the stuff fascinating and it would be cool to see an ark. But we could send 1,000 missionaries to the mission field for 5 years on the money that was spent on this.
GregH, I would suspect Ham would point out that the HuffingtonPost isn’t exactly sympathetic towards the success of the Creation Museum. Ham explained the apparent ‘decline,’ and it was simply an internal split into multiple not-for-profits, but if you add them together, the numbers are solid and not in decline.
Darell,
I saved the $120 ticket price for my family, the $140 in gas, the $100 night hotel, and the $100 in food that I would have spent taking my family and we did the virtual tour. I felt the $500 or so could be spent better in other ways. I never said that there weren’t good aspects of this, but my guess is that the vaste majority of people traveling to this are homeschool or Christian school groups or Christian families. I just think that we can reach the real lost a lot more effectively for a lot less money. Although I am sure that Noah would be happy that the pizza is really good in his cafe.
Do you ever go on a vacation? See America? Or do you stay locked in your home?
[Mark_Smith]Do you ever go on a vacation? See America? Or do you stay locked in your home?
Just returned from a 2 week trip to France with my family. And yes, it was significantly more expensive than going to the Creation Museum. I just saw more value in taking my kids to see Paris and Normandy than to go to the creation museum.
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