Open Doors 101 – Part 2 February 22, 2011
Posted by Dan R. Dick in Church growth, Evangelism, The United Methodist Church.Tags: Church growth, church marketing, Evangelism, The United Methodist Church
19 comments
Yesterday I began a reflection and critique on my most recent engagement with the ReThink Church campaign. Today I want to continue the reflection on some “meta-issues” that are related to, but not specifically about, ReThink Church. However, before I go any further I do want to say that I really appreciated the enthusiastic and collaborative leadership that Ken Sloane and Jennifer Rodia brought to the event. The powerful witness to shared leadership between male and female, clergy and laity, older and younger offered as much grace as anything they said, and I thought they worked together amazingly well. they are both very good at what they do.
In my opinion, ReThink Church reflects the current cultural confusion between marketing and communication. Marketing is all about message — creating a compelling message/identity/brand and transmitting it effectively. This is the remnant pitfall of late 20th century “3G” communication technology. When communication technology developed that allowed single point broadcasting to a wide multi-point audience (think radio, television, movies), the very definition of communication changed. With the advent of the “4G” — multi-point/multi-platform communication between points and platforms — communication is returning to a healthier place.
In classic communications theory, there are five aspects of effective communication — creation of a message, transmission of a message, reception of a message, interpretation of a message, response to/application of a message. Dialogue depends on a dynamic interaction of these aspects. The newly emerging “polylogue” (I love that term…) depends on the full engagement of all aspects as well. But the 3G culture of the 2oth century displaced communication with marketing — creating and transmitting messages, disregarding reception and interpretation, and evaluating response based on numbers — sales, attendance, customers, clients, etc. Without direct, clear qualitative feedback throughout the process, many decisions are made based on assumptions and probabilities rather than direct interaction.
