If you are going to do something, or be involved in something, you should go all the way.

You should be all in.

When you do something halfway or half-heartedly others can tell … and you know yourself that you didn’t put the effort in that was really required.

This applies to individuals and groups, teams as well as businesses, organizations and network television. 

One of the highlight events on television every year is the Super Bowl. 

Even people who don’t watch football, don’t care about football, and don’t know who’s playing in the game still watch the Super Bowl.

There were over 60,000 people in the stadium in Miami on Sunday night to watch the game. There was an estimated 100 millions viewers watching the game on television.

And even in Canada it was a huge draw. About 4.5 million people in our country tuned in to watch the spectacle called the Super Bowl.

I, for one, had a group of hungry … well, I shouldn’t say fans, but hungry people over to watch on our TV. And one of the things we were looking forward to seeing were the commercials. 

Companies were paying about 5 million dollars for a 30 second commercial during the Super Bowl game. And when you spend that much money on air time, you are going to spend a wad of cash on making that commercial spectacular.

I even had little bingo cards made up for my guests to daub when a commercial for a certain product with a particular celebrity occupied a square on their card.

It was perfect for my group of less-than-eager football fans. 

But not in Canada you say? 

For some reason the CRTC and CTV decided they would run Canadian commercials in place of the high priced star-studded commercials in the US. 

CTV didn’t get into selling that kind of commercial space. They just ran regular commercials. In fact, they didn’t even have that many commercials. More than anything else, they ran ads for shows on their network.

If you have an audience who’s all geared up for a big game with all the hoopla – like big expensive commercials – then you should go all in.

Do it up right! 

You either get advertisers to make interesting and outlandish commercials or you just show the ones that they are showing south of the border. 

CTV and TSN should have done it right!  

I had 10 people with bingo cards and I barely could get one person yelling bingo the whole game. 

I went all in: I had the cards, explained the game, got prizes for the winners … and then we watched how Downey can make sweaters soft when you wash them in their detergent. 

I’m not buying it. I don’t mean that I don’t believe Downey will make a sweater softer, I’m just not going to buy the product. 

When a network buys the rights to air something as big as the Super Bowl, they should fight the CRTC to the limit so they can go all in and broadcast all the Super Bowl goodness. 

Oh, and by the way, the Kansas City Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers 31-20.

Here’s the thing: When Christ came to earth, He was all in. He left all He had in heaven, took on human frailties, and went all the way to die on the cross for our sins. Jesus was all in. In exchange He calls us to be fully committed to Him. Don’t be half-hearted with Christ; be all in. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What is your commitment level to Christ right now? Leave your comments and questions below.