Thursday, September 15, 2005
The Message And The Medium
The BBC, of all places, is looking at church advertising.
I went to a breakfast meeting at church this morning to discuss ways to bring "discipleship" into the mainstream life of our congregation. Our whole purpose was to discuss not how to get people to church, but how to turn people that go to church into deeply committed followers of Jesus Christ.
The essence of advertising is to find the "key" message, state it plainly, simply, and memorably -- in as little time or space as possible. I don't think genuine discipleship can possibly be encouraged in such a fashion. To consider an analogy, how would you "advertise" Newton's Principia Mathmatica? Maybe that's too easy -- you could go after the three basic motion laws. Consider then a great work of literature - "Crime and Punishment" for example? Anything you can come up with will of necessity only communicate a part of that novel. See the problem.
Clever posters, glossy cinema adverts - the church is increasingly adopting the ways of the world in attempting to attract attention to itself. Some say it's the only way to get a message across in modern times.OK, problem one -- the church is not supposed to attract attention to itself-- it's supposed to attract attention to Jesus! But that could just be the story writers issue.
I went to a breakfast meeting at church this morning to discuss ways to bring "discipleship" into the mainstream life of our congregation. Our whole purpose was to discuss not how to get people to church, but how to turn people that go to church into deeply committed followers of Jesus Christ.
The essence of advertising is to find the "key" message, state it plainly, simply, and memorably -- in as little time or space as possible. I don't think genuine discipleship can possibly be encouraged in such a fashion. To consider an analogy, how would you "advertise" Newton's Principia Mathmatica? Maybe that's too easy -- you could go after the three basic motion laws. Consider then a great work of literature - "Crime and Punishment" for example? Anything you can come up with will of necessity only communicate a part of that novel. See the problem.
