The Space Between

I like to think that I have a talent for solving problems.  In my occupation, I really enjoy listening to groups of people and have them tell me what they want to happen.  When one group of people does this, its pretty boring, and in my business, rarely has successful results.  That's because when you can marketing to people there is an innate sense of "us" and "them".  To break that does further, the "us" can refer to the business with whom we work (they are our client) and the "them" is what we refer to in marketing as the "target audience".

One of my favorite activities is to identify the needs or viewpoint of each "audience" and the "client" and look at what I call "the space between".  This is where all those differences lie.  This is where communication happens (whether good or bad).  By analyzing this space, we can derive things that need to be communicated or reinforced.  We can correct behavior in the business, or guide the consumer the right direction.  The goal is to find that precious "common ground".  But this common ground may not come all at once.  If the client is one bank of a river, and the consumer is the other bank, ideally we could create a bridge.  More often than not that bridge building requires a strategy and is more like placing rocks in the river until the communication is direct and perfected.

And so it should come as no surprise that I apply this same "tool of the trade" to evangelism.  All to often we us the term "us" and "them", but do we ever pause and analyze who these target audiences are?  I think there is a basic undertone in christian circles that demonizes certain groups so that we can apply the "them" label.  But this is poor marketing, and the fact of that matter is that the church has no idea who the target audience is.  No wonder our communication fails so miserably.

One thing I like to look at in the Bible is who is the target audience at any given time.  I've drawn some generalities.  For starters, we find that the majority of the Bible is written to a group of people I'm going to call "believers".  These are basically people who "believe" God.  In otherwords, they truly value what He says.  The other group is who I will call "non-believers".  These are not who you would expect.  These are people who haven't heard about God.  There is a very small group of people referred to in the Bible that's I'm going to call "unbelievers".  These are the people that think God is full of bologna.

Using the 80/20 rule (because I need to use that axiom I learned in human resource management class somewhere), I believe that 80% of Bible speaks to believers, 20% to non-believers, and probably about 1% to unbelievers.  I know the math doesn't quite work out which is why I'm not an accountant.  If look at the whole of the old testament, most books speak to believers (the people of Israel) and a few books (like Ecclesiastes or Psalms) speak to a general audience.  The gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) and some other books (Acts, Romans and Hebrews) speak to non-believers, and the letters of Paul to the churches speak to believers.

You may think that this is a nice exercise, but what's the point?  Well, here's where another "space between" comes into play.  The bible contains "the law".  These are holy precepts command by God to be followed by His "believers".  Romans 7 (and surrounding chapters) details how the "law" works in a very logical fashion.   The schtick is this... the law doesn't apply to non-believers. (record scratching sounds).  That's right, the law applies to believers! But here's the other rub... the law is unable to save, it can only cause you to sin. (tire screeching sounds).  What?

We "believers" think that it's our job to tell "non-believers" what their sin is.  But they are not under the law, so they look at us like a deer in the headlights and say "so?".  Then we get all frustrated when they keep on sinning according to laws that we cobble together from our cultural biases and loose biblical references.  The truth is, we are communicating the wrong message to the wrong group of people.  No wonder the "world" see us as hypocrites.

So what are we to do?  Well, the good news is that Jesus came to give us some communication advice.  We are commanded to "spread the good news".  What is this good news?  Well, for starters (and this is a free tip)... it's "Good".  It's not condemning, it's not telling people they are going to hell, it's not telling them that they are evil because they are (insert demonized people label of the month here).  We are called to "love" these people and tell them how much God cares about them that he gave them His only son, that who so ever BELIEVES.... holy crap, there's that word!

Our job is to help people to believe what God says, to believe that the rules and regs and laws that he set up (hereby referred to as PRECEPTS) give life, give wisdom and give peace.  That's God's gift to us.  It's forgiveness, grace and mercy, and God entrusted us (yeah that's you church) to be the messengers of that.  So why are you still reading this blog?

That's right church, 80% of the bible is written to YOU.  So dig the plank our of your own eye, and help "them" to see and hear and believe God.  And then when they believe, you can give them a hand with some tweezers.