I was just looking at a twitter feed, @EssentialChurch, which is apparently promoting a book on reaching out to church “dropouts” (not a bad way to phrase the problem of attracting/retaining young adults). Many of the tweets are about a missional or outward focus. For instance:
The most outwardly focused churches are many times the healthiest on the inside.
A missional church thinking outwardly usually is a healthy church inwardly.
Fair enough. I bring your attention to this because they are the sorts of things one hears a lot these days in many churches, and there is an obvious truth to them. You hear this, and even though it’s quite vague, you can’t help but nod. The church exists for the sake of its mission, they seem to be saying. We need to spend less time on inward focused things like denominational polity and the color of paint in the sanctuary and more time on reaching out and connecting with the things people actually care about. And who could dispute this? My guess is that even the people who make every church meeting so miserable by turning each trivial decision into an epic battle agree with it in principle.
But what I noticed was that both of these aphorisms could be inverted, and they would also express a truth. For example, we might say that churches that are focused on prayer and searching the scripture tend to have the most effective mission. Churches that listen to the word God speaks within might have the most powerful outreach. Doesn’t quite have the ring to it, but you get the idea. Christians of some eras have been most moved by interiority. I assume I’m not saying anything radical when I note that it’s not really a question of outreach or formation. One generation may get more excited about the one than the other, but you can’t have one without the other.
My point is only to say that we have to be careful about thinking in shorthand. Slogans have their place, and some churches have made very effective use of tweets and Facebook statuses. But we have to be sure that we don’t mistake a good one-liner for the whole story, or one generation’s truism for the truth. I fear that in our laudable efforts to employ current marketing techniques for evangelistic ends, we create echo chambers.
The Bible actually has something like a Twitter feed in the book of Proverbs. But it doesn’t just keep driving home a single message over and over. The individual proverbs supplement each other, nuance each other, sometimes contradict each other. “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit” (Prov. 26:4-5). You see how you would be missing something essential if you only read one or the other of those verses? A good aphorism is more than a truism, good preaching is more than platitudes, and good exhortation more than cheer leading.
Tweet 140 characters at at time if you must, but don’t think that way!
