Holy Hype! Can It Fill the Pews?

--Some might say that the Rev. Kenneth Chalker missed his calling. The new senior minister of First United Methodist Church in downtown Cleveland just launched an offbeat advertising drive to attract new parishioners--which now number 200, down from 3,000 in 1924. One of the ads, placed in college newspapers, reads: “Rush at East 30th and Euclid. We Don’t Have Hell Week.” “I’m hoping for the reaction: ‘Gee, that’s different. I’d like to check it out,’ ” Chalker said. His Madison Avenue-style crusade, in which he plays a starring role, is using print ads, bus cards, mail appeals and radio spots--all intended to “convey the image of a dynamic, inclusive, growing congregation.” In one radio commercial, voices announced as a chorus of angels accompany Chalker, 37, as he is supposed to be on his way to a meeting with The Big Guy. “Next time, we’ll do God as a woman,” Chalker said of the radio spots. “That’d be engaging to do.” He said that the campaign will ease up after Christmas, but will be stepped up again for the Easter season.

--To Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Florida Inc., a rule is a rule is a rule--without exception. The case of retiree Bob Kirkpatrick of West Palm Beach, Fla., illustrates the point: Kirkpatrick, 76, received four Medicare reimbursement checks for 6 cents apiece, each with the following note: “Please cash this check as soon as possible.” Problem is, the government paid 17 cents postage to send each check. “I thought it was a little silly,” Kirkpatrick said. “It just struck me as an uneconomic procedure.” But Jeff Wollitz of Blue Cross-Blue Shield, which mailed the checks for the Medicare program, said that it was simply a matter of settling debts. “We’re just complying with the government regulations,” he said. “It costs more than 6 cents, just from the postage factor. We have a bulk mail rate of 17 cents for each of those mailings, so it costs at least that, but there’s no way to put an average printing bill on them.”

--Painter Robert Motherwell and composer Milton Babbitt are the newest members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Their selection for the prestigious literary group of 50 artists and writers was announced by the National Institute of Arts and Letters in New York. Motherwell, 71, a founder of the New York Abstract Expressionist movement, will take the chair held by writers Katherine Anne Porter and Bernard Malamud, while Babbitt, 76, founder and a director of the Princeton-Columbia Music Center, takes the place of poet e. e. cummings and painter Georgia O’Keeffe.