27
2010
Are you interesting?
An article by 
Seth Godin’s blog from Tuesday has had me thinking:
How media changes politics
If you want to get elected in the US, you need media.
When TV was king, the secret to media was money. If you have money, you can reach the masses. The best way to get money is to make powerful interests happy, so they’ll give you money you can use to reach the masses and get re-elected.
Now, though…When attention is scarce and there are many choices, media costs something other than money. It costs interesting. If you are angry or remarkable or an outlier, you’re interesting, and your idea can spread. People who are dull and merely aligned with powerful interests have a harder time earning attention, because money isn’t sufficient.
Thus, as media moves from TV-driven to attention-driven, we’re going to see more outliers, more renegades and more angry people driving agendas and getting elected. I figure this will continue until other voices earn enough permission from the electorate to coordinate getting out the vote, communicating through private channels like email and creating tribes of people to spread the word. (And they need to learn not to waste this permission hassling their supporters for money).
Mass media is dying, and it appears that mass politicians are endangered as well.
This is not just something that is being experienced by politicians, this is the experience of churches as well. In the new economy, staying interesting is hugely important. The challenge is that we need to stay interesting while at the same time keeping from being angry interesting or interesting for interesting’s sake.
From where I sit we are in a great place… the story of God’s move on this planet is one of the greatest, most compelling stories ever told. It is incumbent upon us to ensure that we tell that story with the level of passion, awe, and wonder that it deserves. Just as the day of three network TV is dead, the day of people showing up for church because that is what you do on Sunday morning is over as well…
How do you ensure that your church continues to be interesting to the world around it?
About the Author: Matt Steen
Over the last fifteen years I have been a Church Planter, Youth Pastor, Executive Pastor, and now I serve as a Church Concierge with churchsimple.net. I love Jesus, my wife, the Redskins and Capitals and am currently living on Long Island striving to properly pronounce the word G'island.
