Session 8: Waiting for the Promise
Suggested Week of Use: October 25, 2015
Core Passage: Genesis 15:1-7,13-16
Written by Dr. Dwayne McCrary
News Story Summary:
On Tuesday, October 6, 2015, in response to requests from tens of thousands of customers (and in the face of declining sales), McDonald’s restaurants began offering items from their breakfast menu all day long. They also enlisted 40-50 employees to work all day long sending individual Tweets to customers who have been asking for all-day breakfast on social media from as far back as 2006.
According to an article on Time.com:
“McDonald’s is sifting through its Twitter feed all the way back to 2006 with the goal of responding to each and every Tweet that made a request for all-day breakfast. With the help of public relations firm Golin, McDonald’s has identified 334,000 Tweets and plans to send replies to 88,000 unique accounts. It’s a slow process, and the company is optimizing its strategy for maximum brand lift, interacting first with the most active accounts.”
1 Another article from AdAge.com reveals that all-day breakfast is McDonald’s customers’ top request—in the past year alone, the company has received more than 120,000 Tweets about it.2 In a statement on the decision, McDonald’s president Michael Andres explained, “This is the consumers’ idea. This is what they want us to do.”3 (For more on this story, search the Internet using phrases such as “McDonald’s all-day breakfast” or “McDonald’s using Twitter.”)
Focus Attention:
Ask the group: “What is something you’ve waited for a long time that either finally happened or hasn’t happened yet?” Allow time for responses. Then say, in a serious tone: “On Tuesday, October 6, 2015, a large, international corporation finally made good on something hundreds of thousands of people had been requesting for decades. Can anybody guess what it was?” Give people time to guess. Then reveal that this was the day McDonald’s began serving all-day breakfast. Share highlights from the news story.
Transition to the study by stating that some promises are more world-changing than others. Even though another Time.com article began its coverage of this story with the statement “the world changed at 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday,”4 the truth is that being able to get an Egg McMuffin any time of the day isn’t all that earth-shattering. Still, a lot of people had been waiting for a long time for that promise to be fulfilled. In today’s Bible study, we are going to learn about someone who waited even longer for God to keep a much, much bigger promise.
Challenge:
Refer back to the news story, and highlight the fact the McDonald’s has over 40 people working full time to respond to 88,000 individual Twitter users over something as trivial as offering an all-day breakfast. But it is important for them to let their customers know that they keep their promises. Close by leading the group to reflect on how they are letting people know God keeps His promises.