“The medium is the message”, said the great philosopher of mass media, Marshall
McLuhan.
It’s his most oft-quoted line, since it’s
so often true. When you have a message
to send, you’ve got to be very careful about the form (i.e. the “method” or “medium”) in which you’re sending
it, or the message itself can become horribly distorted.
An Example
A few years ago, a local political party in
our neighbourhood decided on a new election strategy. Instead of putting their
efforts into boring, windy debates or expensive campaign posters, or listing it
on dull trifold brochures that everybody just throws out, they would use a new
medium — a comic book.
That’s right, folks: somebody thought that
was a good idea.
In fact, a bunch of people must have thought it was a good
idea, because it made it to press. I found one of these delightfully cheesy
offerings in my mailbox.
Now, aside from the obvious association
between comic books and childishness, there was quite a serious insult implicit
in the idea that the electorate in our area was reduced to the intellectual
level at which that medium would be appropriate. And I couldn’t tell you if
they had any serious platform to offer: I was too busy laughing at their
stupidity.
I’m sure Marshall McLuhan was rolling in
his grave.
It’s not just the message — it’s how
you deliver the message. In fact, what McLuhan knew is that the medium is
always intrinsically part of the
message. No — more than that — the medium can very easily become the whole message, as it did for that
clueless political party. Their message made but one impression on me, and it
wasn’t a good one.
Closer to Home
I think, though, we also need a revival of
this awareness in the church. Since we preach the most important message in the
world, we must always be very careful to preach it in such a way that we enhance that message, not impair it. And it is quite possible
that if we don’t keep this in mind, we will not actually deliver the message we
hope to at all.
Take a look at the picture at the top of
this post. Is there anything about the message itself there that a Christian would say
is wrong? And it’s well intended, no doubt. But consider where the message is, and how
it was put there, and ask yourself: Is there any aspect of the way the
message got there that stands to interfere with its reception? Was
the person who did this really well advised to use that medium for that message? Or
did he (or she) miss something important?
Application
I’m brought to think of this in regard to what we call “the gospel”. Now, here let me say that for the rest of this post
I’m going to use the word “gospel” in a particular way. I’m not using it as scripture
uses it, precisely — meaning the whole truth about the person and work of
Jesus Christ — but rather as it has slipped into common usage, as merely referring to the message of “how to get saved”. Most Christians today use it that way, so I’m
going to go along with that for the sake of the moment: but I’d be far happier if
everybody used the word more scripturally.
I’m going to talk about the message (i.e. how to get saved) and the
major media (plural of ‘medium’, not
to be confused with ‘mass media’) by which we may choose to deliver it. I want
to consider not just what message we
deliver, but how we ought to deliver
it. And I want to risk being rather critical of a great deal what we do in the
name of “gospel preaching”, even though I know that is certain to set a good
many teeth on edge. But I want to do all that with a view to something very
positive: a better, more biblical view of what we are doing with the gospel. Ready?
To begin with, there are two major
approaches to thinking about the gospel. The first one is dominant today, and
particularly so among congregations with particular theological leanings and
rather incomplete understandings of the gospel. The second way is what I see as
the biblical ideal for sharing the gospel. And I’m happy to let you be the
judge of whether or not I’m right.
Firstly, here’s what we tend to practice today:
The Proclamational Gospel
When we’re thinking this way, we focus on
verses like Philippians 1:18, from which we take that it matters not how we get the message of salvation out,
it only matters that we do. We do it
loud and long, and we do it without regard for the medium in which it is being
offered, because we are assuming that just the hearing of it is all that
matters. Maybe we take John 5:25 as justification for our attitude. In
any case, we think that so long as the message “gets out” we’re good.
Inconveniently for us, the Bible itself has
declined to deliver the message of salvation in a nice, tidy package suitable
for this kind of approach. So we feel we must help God get it right. We
repackage the message as four or five tidy points: call them “The Five Steps” or “The Four Spiritual Laws”. In this revised form, we can make the message into a short presentation, visual
or tract, and disperse it quickly and widely. After all, we’re proclaiming more
than explaining, and we’ve got to move on.
The Good of It
There is something good in this. It is true
that sometimes we don’t have time to employ all the scriptural methods of
evangelism in a particular situation, and have time instead only for a
“shorthand” kind of message. At that time, we probably do need to cut to the
chase as soon as possible, since we lack the opportunity for any more. In that
situation, a précis of the sort described above is the best we can do.
It is also true that if the gospel is shared
in any way, that’s a good thing —
so long as what’s being shared is actually the gospel. Of course, there’s
always the danger that we won’t really convey the message well if we’re in a
rush; but we all live with limitations at times, and we have to take the opportunity we have, not the kind we wish we had. Sometimes the ideal is not possible.
Now, this is the best thing about the “proclamational” approach. Having the
salvation message boiled down into four or five easily comprehensible steps is
particularly helpful for the edification of those who are already Christians
and need to glean a more concise understanding of the basics of salvation. In
fact, I would say that every Christian should study these concepts at length
and really grasp how they connect organically to form a whole conception of how
one enters the new life. This knowledge can greatly empower Christians in
checking themselves to see if they’ve actually managed to convey to another
person the basis process by which a person comes into the kingdom of God: not a
bad thing to have at all. But the good of it is really for the Christian, not
so much for those to whom he or she is communicating: they may well need much
more than that in order to understand.
The Bad of It
The proclamational approach comes with some
rather serious drawbacks. Firstly, it is only a rush approach. The danger of
that is that we will use it when we could do more. We will feel that we have
“done the job” when all we have done is sketch out a list of things in no order
found in scripture, and have left our audience more puzzled than informed.
Secondly, since it is a shorthand approach
using passages entirely extracted from their context, we are presenting the
message in a non-holistic way, detached from the stories, explanations and
contexts that make sense of it all. Most importantly, our message has become
detached from any profound knowledge of the person of Christ, and has become
instead a sort of technique or method of getting people into heaven. We can then
begin to think that this is all that matters, rather than realizing that we are
offering an invitation into a complete relationship with a real person —
and that such things cannot actually be had if you don’t know who the person in
question is.
Now, finally, I have observed a very bad
practical effect of overemphasis of the proclamational gospel. And here I must
speak from personal experience. Congregations that get over-focused on the
proclamational method often tend to become wearied of it. After all, it is not
very deep in regard to relationship, and can become repetitive and technical. Worse
than that, the hurried and unthoughtful manner of its delivery can become
offensive to listeners every bit as much as its content.
So congregations gradually take to
particular practices to combat this. One strategy they use is mass evangelism
instead of personal contact: after all, mass evangelism by a more professional
speaker is far easier than one-on-one, and is slicker in delivery as well.
Another strategy is to stop preaching externally, and take the gospel indoors, preaching it regularly on Sunday mornings inside the chapel or church building. It is then assumed that
faithfulness in the gospel is being achieved by nothing more than “proclaiming” to a congregation the message they already know, and that the off-chance that a
non-believer may wander in among them is sufficient to dispense with their duty to evangelize.
And when things reach this stage,
proclamation has actually ceased … because of the proclamational view of
the gospel.
An Important Note
Before I go on to the alternative, let me
say something very clearly. I am in favour of proclamation. I am even in favour
of the proclamational approach to the gospel — in every situation in which
no more is possible. But I am
critical of it in every situation in which more IS possible, and less is being done.
Is that clear enough? I hope so. Let us go on.
The Relational Gospel
If God had wished for the gospel to be no
more than a proclaimed message, he simply could have proclaimed it. A voice
from the sky, two tablets of stone (actually, one would have done), a singular
prophet, or a book all by itself would have been sufficient to proclaim a bare
message. But God did not do that.
It was not enough to have the Word: the Word had to become flesh and live among us. Jesus Christ had to come in the flesh. There had to be a real, embodied person, and he would have to do a great deal more than talk. He would live among people, touch them and be touched by them, speak with them
as beloved and friends, or implore them as his own lost sheep. He would embody all that God the Father was right in their very presence. The Word would be made flesh … fleshed out as a real human being. The medium and the message would become identical.
Not only that, he would not just speak but
would verify his words with his actions, and would put his very own body on the line to make that message real. He would enter into a relationship of vulnerability and commitment with those who
would despise him, betray him and tear his flesh off his body. He would not just say the message: he
would be it.
And after his resurrection, he would call
others to become his body on earth, to enact in their flesh the truth of his gospel, and to call in their flesh
others into actual, embodied relationship to him. Again, he did not merely
leave a message: he left an incarnate
message, a message-in-the-flesh. And that is what we are, in relation to his gospel.
We are the medium of the message. Thus
we cannot simply broadcast the Lord’s words and leave it at that. We are to
incarnate the truth of those words in all we do, manifest them in our flesh to the world, and speak them from our lips as well.
The true gospel, the complete gospel, the holistic,
integrated gospel, is a combination of powerful words of salvation plus the physical presence and
commitment of human actors upon those words. It is a call borne by those who
put themselves on the line in real, embodied relationships with the lost —
who come to all who rightfully belong to God, whether they receive the message or not — and dwell among them attesting to the glory of the Father through
Jesus Christ his Son.
The Tragedy of Mere Proclamation
When we can do that, mere proclamation is
never enough. In fact, to opt for mere proclamation when genuine relationality
is possible is actually unfaithfulness to the gospel. To preach in shorthand
when opportunities for more eloquent communication abound, to close our homes
and hearts when they could be open and available to the lost, to cloister
ourselves with only Christian friends when we could be welcoming those whom
Christ loves but who do not yet know him, or to refuse to put our money, our
homes, our jobs, our families and our own bodies on the line in order to
incarnate the gospel to others … well, that’s just wrong.
Right message: wrong medium.
And that’s the tragedy of the
proclamational view of the gospel: far too often it’s really just a way to duck
our obligation to be relational and incarnational with the gospel. It
encourages us to stand too far back, to extract who we are from what we are
saying, to separate our lips from our lives, and to divorce the message from the medium in which the Lord wants it delivered.
The Point
I think we’ve got to go back to our deepest
assumptions about the gospel. Is it merely a sort of “magic message” that we
set loose on the world independent of our role as agents of that message, or do
we have a greater responsibility to incarnate the message we preach? I think
the answer to that is obvious. And yet it’s surprising how many of our current
practices are opposite to it.
Do we focus our evangelistic efforts on
mass programs or Sunday in-church meetings, or are we really earnest about
helping each and every Christian in our congregation to become the embodiment
of that message to their neighbourhoods, their associates, their acquaintances
and their friends in the unsaved world? Can we continue our conventional
evangelistic practices, so many of which “professionalize” the delivery of the
message and take it out of the hands of ordinary believers, and reasonably
expect any change for the better?
I think not. I think what we’ve got to do,
so far as the local church is concerned, is stop doing the pseudo-evangelism
thing, and start doing more and better edification for the Christians, to equip them to “be” Christ to the world, instead of taking their ministry away from
them and giving it to our “experts” and our institutions.
Now that’s going to bug some people. They’re
going to object, “Can’t we do both?” I think not. I think the mental shift
required of people is so great that so long as we keep our conventional
institutions of evangelism there is no reasonable prospect they will be able to
make the jump. If we show people that
only “experts” and “professionals” can really evangelize, but tell them that they ought to be
evangelizing for themselves, there’s no reason for them to believe us. They’ll
hear our words, but pay more attention to what we are doing.
The medium is the message, you see.
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