Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter to build expansion featuring Tower of Babel
“On the fifth anniversary of the Ark Encounter, which features a 510-foot-long wooden Noah’s ark, founder Ken Ham has announced the expansion of the Bible-themed attraction in Kentucky by building a Tower of Babel attraction on the park’s grounds.” - C.Post
Also at CT: The Latest Biblical Attraction: The Tower of Babel
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If this proves to be a success look toward Ken building the throne room in heaven.
…..why would we assume that this will be a better idea the second time around than the first?
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
I think they’ll be happy if it’s “as good as” the first, in terms of getting lots of visits.
How do you measure the success of a venture like this? If the goal is evangelism/apologetics, you need metrics that show “gospel exposures” or “gospel inquiries” and the like. I don’t know if they try to track that. Maybe they do.
But is the goal to educate and strengthen evangelical Christians? Then you have different ways you have to try to measure that.
But is the goal to have a successful business to evangelicals? Then it comes down to traditional things like numbers of visitors and revenue relative to expenses, etc.
Part of the challenge of doing something like this well is that you have a built-in set of business concerns. They’re inescapable, given that the project has to be very expensive to operate. The danger is of these becoming the “main thing.” The current automatically pulls in that direction if you’re using a ticket sales revenue model. If it was free/very low cost and funded entirely or mostly by donations, you’d have a different current/pull to worry about.
To me, there’s something vaguely distasteful about it the museum/amusement park model, but I can’t say my vague distaste is meaningful. It doesn’t seem like the Bible way to do things, I guess. But at this point, that’s just my gut feeling about it.
I don’t know enough to about their objectives and measurements to judge whether they’re effective or not, so I’m not going to pass judgment on it.
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.
[Aaron Blumer] To me, there’s something vaguely distasteful about it the museum/amusement park model, but I can’t say my vague distaste is meaningful. It doesn’t seem like the Bible way to do things, I guess. But at this point, that’s just my gut feeling about it.
Build it … they will come (Once)
On the one hand I can see the allure to having a museum that drive a narrative that is more biblically aligned than at the secular museums.
On the other hand, I feel that faith is not strengthened by seeing carricatures of the Scriptural events, but by spending time in the Word of God.
There is probably a balance here. A typical family of 5 would expect to pay $165 to see the ark. I am not sure if that is money better spent to support the museum or missions. They appear to be bringing in about $250,000 on Saturdays in ticket sales. Add in another $50,000 in ancillary items and that is about $300,000 on a Saturday.
…would be an appraisal of how the relatively soft pitch mortar would hold up under the weight of the masonry. Brick is softer than the best stone (igneous like granite), and you’ve got limiting factors with the robustness and flexibility of the mortar.
(if you look at old buildings, you’ll notice it’s huge expanses of masonry without cracks, where modern masonry will start to develop cracks every so often…the difference is that the old lime mortar flexes a bit more than portland cement mortar)
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
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