Media to movements. Using media to accelerate Church planting.
One of the challenges that we have in missions is going into a place where the gospel is not been established and seeing reproducing fruit from our work. Our friends Ron and Ann arrived in Southeast Asia with hopes of seeing the gospel be established in a major city. They moved into a neighborhood, and spend significant time living among their neighbors, going to neighborhood activities, participating in local religious rituals – things they felt were salt and light in an incarnational approach to ministry. After nearly twenty years, Ron commented to me that even though he did the “right things” it seemed to him that the people in the four block radius were simply not interested in Christ, though they personally liked Ron and Ann and cried when they returned to their home country.
The purpose of this article is to discuss how using media can identify pockets of people who are truly interested in the gospel. By identifying people who are open to spiritual change, these media principles can cultivate the emergence of disciple making movements. As Robert Coleman notes in The Master Plan of Evangelism (Coleman, 2006), an important step to training up leaders who can spark a church planting movement involves finding people in whom we can invest. To do this, we need to find people from an unreached population who are spiritually open.
The article 2 1/2 percent: Church planting movements from the periphery to the center (McGuire,2010) observes that at least 2 ½ percent of any population is open to religious change. This is based on the principle of anomalies and is considered foundational in understanding social movements (Rogers,1995). People converting from one religion to another while residing in the majority religion context are considered social anomalies. Though in one sense having 2 ½ percent of the population open to religious change can be heartening, many of us can attest that the antithesis of this calculation is that we have a 97.5 percent chance of spending time with people who are not open to conversion. Key to proper selection is finding the right kinds of people who will be open to religious change and will become those who contribute to a movement.
As we observe Paul’s ministry, we run across an interesting observation. Paul was called to bring the gospel to the Greeks. In Acts 13:46 Paul makes it clear to Jewish leaders of a synagogue that since they rejected the Gospel message, he and Barnabas were turning their attention to the Gentiles. But as we scan to Act 17, we read in verse 2 that “as was his custom” Paul and Barnabas were back in the synagogue reasoning with those who had gathered. Why would Paul in chapter 13 disavow Jews and turn his attention to the Greeks and then in chapter 17 make it his modus operandi to go the synagogue? The answer lies in the outcome. “A large number of God fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women” followed Paul (verse 4). Instead of preaching to the masses in the Greek bathhouses, Paul felt the place to identify people who had the best potential for spiritual reproduction would be among the God fearing Greeks in the Jewish synagogue.
This principle was codified in research done by Martin Fishbein (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) where he states that the best predictor of people being willing to adopt a new behavior such as conversion is past behavior. In other words, Greeks who attended the synagogue were more likely to become Christians than the Greeks attending bath houses. In terms of persuasion, Paul looked for people who had a predisposition to be persuaded with the gospel message as compared to people who did not demonstrate behavior of receptivity. Paul felt he had the greater chance of finding the 2 ½percent who were open to religious change in the synagogue than in the bath houses.
John Wesley teaches that since prevenient grace exists for those in the conversion process, God is involved in heart change that leads to salvation (Cox, 1969). Jesus states in John 6:44, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them.” According to Wesley and, by extension, Fishbein, people who are being drawn to God will demonstrate conversion behavior. We in missions often refer to this as “someone being open to the gospel.” In the Disciple Making Movement (DMM)training, we often made Shema statements (statements about God that identify seekers) with people we were around in order to see who responded with interest to such statements. Such a response could bean indicator of someone being open to discuss aspects of the gospel.
Spiritual Pathways
In the gospel of John we observe at least two spiritual pathways that people followed in their embracing of “righteousness by faith.” Though these are not exhaustive, they do offer a pattern. The first one is in John 3 with Nicodemus. This member of the ruling council had theological questions for Jesus regarding (re)birth from above as opposed to salvation by birthright, which was a common position of the Sanhedrin. Jesus directed him to correctly understand that birth by the Spirit is not dependent on one’s lineage. Nicodemus’ spiritual journey was through a theological pathway.
The second example is found in John 4 when Jesus encountered the Samaritan woman at the well. This woman was coming to Jesus through her issues of shame. She had had five husbands and the man she was with now with wasn’t a husband. Since it was not the custom for a woman to be an initiator of marriage or divorce choices, and since the law and customs stated that the punishment for adultery was stoning, this woman clearly had some reason other than bad choices or immorality causing her multiple marriages. Some scholars have surmised, based upon the context of her culture, that barrenness was an issue that could lead to divorce. Perhaps Jesus’ illumination of her marital history was not, as some have suggested, to point out sin, but rather to speak to a core identity issue which would have related to barrenness, an issue of shame in that culture. In verse 6 the passage notes that the well from which she was drawing water was Jacob’s well, on the land he had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s wife Rachel had been barren (Genesis 30). This hints that the woman was there to obtain some sort of Barakah, a special blessing or power normally obtained from objects, to overcome her shame of barrenness. Hence, Jesus discusses with her the ability to receive “living water” to satisfy her brokenness.
Another example of pathways from the discussion above is God fearing Greeks. Paul was able to identify a Greek subpopulation who broke out of cultural norms and was willing to adopt an alternative religious practice. It is clear from the passage in Acts 17 that Paul made this a ministry model. In Acts16 when Paul entered Philippi, a Roman military city that banned synagogues, Paul went outside the city by a river to find where Jews could pray. Paul sat down with Lydia, a worshipper of God, which most commentators note she was a proselyte or “God fearing Greek.”
In the Media to Movements blog, I discuss these pathways as persona, characteristics of people who are most open to embrace “righteousness by faith.” Each culture has macro, meso and micro conditions that seem to facilitate conversion. Macro conditions could be issues like the rise of ISIS that has left many Muslims disillusioned with Islam. Micro would be someone getting cancer and asking “Am I being punished for sin?” A meso (Latin for “middle”) condition would be community religious leader sexually abusing children, again, making people disillusioned with God. Generally, these can be “bucketed” into seven personas1, keeping in mind that this list of seven will shift from culture to culture. For example, divorced women/single mothers may be a persona in the west, whereas in Saudi Arabia a persona may be religiously oppressed women. Recently a media ministry identified Syrian refugees as being a population that was open to the gospel and is shaping a media campaign for these displaced populations.
The way we generally identify the seven persona is to begin with data. Who in the past have responded to media messages? In Southeast Asia, we identified 26% of our media respondents who asked questions: “Does Allah care that I exist?” Another 24% wondered if “Allah hears our prayers.” We shaped a media campaign called Care and Prayer which was designed around these two personas, and which resulted in the single largest media response from Muslims that we have experienced. Prior to that, most of our materials were apologetics, which we found out from our research was an issue for less than 2%. Focusing on the group that was open was more productive than pushing out an apologetics message that we felt was important.
In absence of data from research, we gather testimonies of converts from the past and look for patterns. If there are no converts, we look at near ethnic groups and obtain ideas. I have a friend working in South Asia who hired Hindus to tell gospel stories from the Bible to the people they felt were open to the. These “insiders” knew who was open and who was not. Though this practice is not recommended, it does provide an example of being creative in having locals identify what sub-populations are most open and which ones are not.
Media Changing the Calculation of 2 ½ percent
The question that this article is addressing is, if we have a 2 ½ percent chance of finding social anomalies who can become world changers, what can we do to improve our opportunities to identify those who are receptive to spiritual change, much like Paul did by going to the synagogue and identifying God fearing Greek.
In returning to an observation made in the 2 ½ percent article (McGuire, 2010), a media strategy has the potential to identify a subpopulation of potential candidates. But after conducting significant research on media used in church planting done by most of the major media organizations, several observations can be made.
First, media does a poor job of persuading people to become followers of Jesus. Even though a media organization may spend significant resources in developing a great media product, be it a web site, video, or a radio program, if people don’t find resonance with the message, they will tune it out. The reason for this is explained in the article Use and Gratifications Model (Rubin, 2002). Essentially what this model states is that people use media to satisfy their own needs and not the needs of the sender. If a message conflicts with previously held beliefs or values, a person will enter a period of cognitive dissonance and will “tune out” in order to maintain balance (Petty & Priester, 2002). But media can identify pockets of individuals who are open of religious change, much like Paul was able to do in Acts 17.
Second, media is generally passively consumed, and yet producers of media generally have a “call to action” at the end of their product for a person to make a “transformational” decision, which is a very active choice. It is nearly impossible for someone to make such a commitment. People simply are not converted at the end of a broadcast or reading a website message. But allowing them to go through a conversion process allows for them to move from passive consideration to become an active seeker. This generally involves having a follow up plan built into the media project. This follow up plan should include a way for the person to respond via text or email with the media developer to begin a spiritual conversation.
Similar to number two above, the third observation is that most media developers consider conversion to be binary– one is either in or out, saved or not saved. There are a host of good reasons for thinking conversion is a binary transaction, but one reason is that most Christian media theory was shaped from secular marketing practices where a customer was offered a product that was designed to meet a felt need, and, if the customer felt compelled, they purchased the product. This is what marketing researchers call “low identity decision making” where a person will add a product to one’s currently held identity structure. Buying a toothpaste generally does not change who you are, but “adds to” one’s identity structure. In contrast, conversion involves what is termed as “high identity decision making” which by nature involves “stages, steps and processes” in the decision making process that leads someone to have a transformed identity (Andreasen, 1995). These stages, steps and processes are central to developing a media strategy as compared to developing a media product. The “Media to Movements” team is available to consult with field teams considering developing a media strategy that shapes the unique “stages, steps and process” in a high identity conversion media strategy that fits their field context.
The last and most significant observation is that most western media products consider conversion as an individualistic process. Does not Romans 10:9-10 lend itself to a personal decision of faith? But when one reads the conversion experience of the converts recorded in the book of Acts, nineteen of the twenty-one conversion stories occur in a group context. For example, in Acts 16 we read of the Philippian jailer:
31 They said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” 32 And they spoke the word of the Lord to him together with all who were in his house. 33 And he took them that very hour of the night and washed their wounds, and immediately he was baptized, he and all his household. 34 And he brought them into his house and set food before them, and rejoiced greatly, having believed in God with his whole household.
Notice the number of times household and house are mentioned. The majority of conversions in Acts involved a group experience.
Fishbein gives some insight into this phenomenon (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980; Fishbein & Cappella, 2006). As stated earlier, Fishbein held that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. He calls this intentionality. Intentionality is a function of belief. Simply stated, if a person believes that if they adopt belief X, this will lead to Y outcome, then they will demonstrate intentionality in behavior. If a person believes a certain car will meet their needs, they will seek that car out searching ads or going to a dealer or sales lot. One does not randomly make a wrong turn on the freeway and come upon a car dealership and then buy a car; they believed and then went to a dealership. As stated earlier, beliefs are not binary; believe or not believe. Rather they are scaled. One could place weak beliefs at a +1 and then strong beliefs at a +8.
Aperson’s friends and relatives (also called a reference group) also have an opinion about a belief. Some agree with a person’s ideas and others do not. Hence a reference group can be scaled, +1 to +8 in support and others will be-1 to-8 in resistance.
Fishbein’s model looks like this:
In high level decision making, a person will be passive in belief formation at the +1 to +3 zone; they will give only a low amount of cognitive energy to a weak belief and subsequent decisions. As they grow more active in beliefs and decisions at the +4 zone, an interesting dynamic emerges. They begin to ask their reference group their opinions on the issue (Fiske & Goodwin, 1994; Stark & Finke, 2000). Secondarily, if they are wanting to continue in their belief, they will begin to segment their reference group into those “for” and those “against.” It is not uncommon for a person to only consult the “for” when they are growing stronger. This begins to shape a clique. In The 2 ½ Percent article (McGuire, 2010), discusses the various roles each member of the clique plays in group decision making. A benefit to clique decision making is the social construct called entitivity, which is derived from the word entity. Entitivity relates to how a group defines its own identity. One characteristic of entitivity is that individual members of a group will go to greater extremes than individuals themselves (Welbourne, 1999). Thomas in John 11:16 was an example of an expression of entitivity. The group provides an environment that fosters faith and commitment in the face of persecution.
Summary
This paper has argued that selection is a key factor in beginning a church planting movement. But selection, by nature, has to have a set of choices from which the church planter can choose. Since a small number of social anomalies are willing to consider a religion other than the majority religion, a media strategy can be used to identify greater numbers than the typical 2 ½ percent.
A misunderstanding of conversion can lead the church planter to be satisfied with “converts” who are only adopting or adhering to a set of religious teaching. What is necessary to reflect true conversion is life transformation that produces disciples that make disciples. Media strategies need to point toward high identify decision making where the person will make conversion decisions that will follow “steps, stages and process” that lead to transformational decision making.
Several weaknesses were noted in most media organizations, namely that they often think of persuasion as the end goal, and not identifying people whom God is calling. Associated with this is that decisions are generally binary– believe or not believe, but in actuality people will move from passive to active seeking in considering the gospel. Media strategies often consider decision making to be individualistic, but in reality people often make high identity decisions as a group. Group decisions can be beneficial since the clique can serve as a support system when individuals experience persecution.
The Media to Movement team is a ministry of Pioneers, and is willing to help teams shape a media strategy that fits their context.
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1 There is nothing magical about seven personas. But I find starting with seven seems to give media ministries the opportunity to think creatively. What we generally find is that focusing on four personas ends up being the most productive and three others are scuttled because they are not impacting the target audience. It is not uncommon that one or two of the four successful ones can be split into one or more as data guides a deeper understanding of who are open. “Unemployed young men” will be different than “unemployed middle age” and as a result, media strategies can be adjusted to their particular spiritual pathway.
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