ARTiculation
Remember life before the smartphone? With the apps, e-mail access and web access I can easily forget it’s also a phone. Problem is, so did the makers of my Blackberry. Not a day goes by without someone saying, “Can you say that again? I can’t hear you?” Turns out the crummy mic on my phone makes me sound like a robot gargling mouthwash.
All this technology and I can’t have a simple phone conversation. Did Paul have smartphones in mind when he wrote to the Corinthians, “Unless you speak intelligible words, how will anyone know what you are saying? You will just be speaking into the air?”
It’s a great reminder of how many ministry organizations operate. Lots of fancy ringtones to captivate but the core message is getting distorted. Jack Welch said, “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.” I would add that poor leaders create a vision but can’t articulate it, get distracted, splinter their energies and resources in a hundred noble affairs and end up with a shell of what could have been.
Church marketing has come under some justified attacks recently in part because it often focuses more on hype and pop culture gimmicks than on speaking truth. It screams loud to get noticed then keeps on screaming (ever louder) to allure those people to come back. But when put in its proper place, isn’t capturing an audience an objective of marketing? After all, what good is “speaking truth” to an empty room? Or as a friend of mine says, you don’t get heard by not being heard. Let’s keep our heads about us. Marketing can be done with integrity and sound doctrine.
[side note: Falling in love with audience retention is a dangerous place to be if you take the Christian message seriously. Jesus grabbed their attention with signs and wonders (a form of marketing perhaps?) but once he had people’s attention the truthful demands of his message often drove that very audience away. Yet the message had legs - didn’t it?]
On the other hand, what do we do when we have their attention? Are we prepared to say exactly what needs to be said, to passionately own the moment and relentlessly drive the message home? A boxer channels every muscle in his body to maximize the impact of his punch. Likewise a well-focused message will hit its mark with clarity and stick. Words, websites, products, events, media, body language, lifestyle, branding all need to come together before an audience can say, “I hear you loud and clear!”
What do you think? Have we lost the art of articulation?
