Ad campaign by Christian group piques interest

Puzzled, pondering faces are up on billboards and bus stop posters around town that ask one enigmatic question: "UNFULFILLED?"

"I don't know what it is," Dale Lawrence said after inspecting one such poster at a Granby Street bus stop. The ad showed a prosperous-looking young woman gazing pensively into a glass tumbler.

"She don't look too happy," said Lawrence, a home care attendant waiting for a bus.

"Maybe somebody's drinking too much," offered Dorothy Forge, another home care aide in the shelter.

Each ad unlocks the mystery by furnishing a Web link to Unfulfilled Ministries, a evangelical Christian organization based in Selma, N.C.

Brian Millard, the ministry's founder, said as many as 200 "Unfulfilled" billboards are up around the country.

About seven billboards and a dozen bus stop posters are up locally, mostly in Norfolk, Portsmouth and Chesapeake. Millard, 37, declined to say how much the media campaign costs or how it was paid for. He said Unfulfilled had official tax-exempt status.

Jim Balestino, a local manager of Adams Outdoor Advertising, said his firm posted the ads on its billboards and bus shelter venues as a public service after being approached by Millard.

The display space is worth several thousand dollars, Balestino said.

Steven G. Vegh, (757) 446-2417, steven.vegh@pilotonline.com