“It’s telling her, ‘If you look like this or take your shirt off or tease men, then you’ll be valued.’ I’m sure this isn’t the goal of the company — to degrade women and tempt men to do the same — but this is exactly what the billboard does.”

When Southern Baptist pastor Freddy T. Wyatt arrives at his New York City church plant and sits down in his office every day, he looks out the window. There, on the side of the Broadway Plaza Hotel, is a four-story billboard that is home to ads for products like Coca-Cola and Vitamin Water. The Gallery Church has been at the corner of 27th and Broadway for nearly three years and, every few weeks when the advertisement changes, members of the congregation can’t help but notice

When Wyatt sat down at his desk and let his eyes drift to the billboard in early April, he was shocked at what he saw — a new ad for Vitamin Water, a brand of Coca-Cola, featuring a half-naked woman with the phrase “xxx you’re up” covering her chest, promoting a flavor of the drink called XXX.

“The billboard took the breath out of me, not in a good way,” Wyatt recounted. “I had begun to look forward to the different ads each month, but this one stopped me in my tracks. It broke my heart.”

Wyatt thought of the men and women in Gallery Church who would see this ad every Sunday as they returned home. “How can they stay focused on the truth just presented to them in church when they walk outside to face a four-story distraction?”

He thought of his children, two young sons and a daughter. What message was this going to send them?

“I was brokenhearted that my daughter, after hearing the message that she is loved and valued by God will walk out the doors of her church only to receive another message by the four-story billboard. It’s telling her, ‘If you look like this or take your shirt off or tease men, then you’ll be valued.’ I’m sure this isn’t the goal of the company — to degrade women and tempt men to do the same — but this is exactly what the billboard does.”

[Editor’s note: This article is incomplete. The source for this document was originally published on bpnews.net—however, the original URL is no longer available.]