Do flyers for my church count as junk mail?

Every Easter, our church prints letterbox flyers inviting locals to our church service. However, as I walk the streets, a number of letterboxes have “No Junk Mail” stickers. If one man’s junk is another man’s treasure, how do I determine if my church invite is wanted or not?
R.B., Auburn, NSW

Credit: Illustration by Simon Letch

A bit of detective work might be necessary here. Whenever you come to a “No Junk Mail” letterbox, peruse the front of the house and try to spot any subtle signs that the inhabitants may not want your flyer. Does the house have a door? Windows? A roof? If it has one or more of these features, you can be almost 97 per cent sure that they’re not church-invite-wanting types. Closer investigation may give you more clues: if the house has a tiny mezuzah box beside the front door, then Jewish people live there, and they can’t make it, they’ll be too busy with Passover. A string of Tibetan prayer flags stretched across a front yard indicates a Buddhist-leaning household, and they’ll still be hungover from Buddha’s birthday celebrations earlier in the month. Ornate domes and crucifixes look promising, but you could be passing the Vatican’s letterbox and Catholics are a bit snobby: they like to do their own churchy stuff at Easter.

Think of it this way: would Jesus have a “No Junk Mail” sticker on his letterbox? Never, he’d be accepting of all unsolicited mail: religious material, Galilee real-estate brochures, a take-away menu for Loaves ‘n’ Fishes, a Vote 4 Herod election pamphlet. So if you want to find the homes of genuine, church-going, Easter-loving, invite-accepting Christians, you should stick to the unstickered letterboxes. Otherwise, your flyer is probably going to get dumped in a recycling bin, along with a leaflet for The Drain Man and a quarterly dental check-up reminder.

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