Perception is Reality
Content that is perceived as helpful always addresses a felt need. Content that doesn’t address a felt need is perceived as irrelevant. Notice I said perceived. It may be the most relevant information an audience has ever heard. But if an audience doesn’t understand how content interfaces with their lives, it’s just not all that interesting.
~Deep and Wide, Andy Stanley
We have a tendency to only pay attention to the things that directly affect us. It’s selfish. It creates major blind spots. And it’s our default reality.
In Deep and Wide, Andy Stanley talks about his approach to ecclesiology. Of course, he doesn’t call it that, but essentially, that’s what the focus is. And today’s quote is a gem from that book because it recognizes the reality of the human condition.
We are inherently selfish. I don’t say this as a negative, either. Don’t misunderstand me. We have an inner drive towards self-preservation, and that makes us selfish. After all, when it comes to survival, there is a need to be focused on ourselves. This is what’s so hard about living a life of discipleship.
Discipleship calls us to go against our deeply held, ingrained beliefs in the priority of the self, and it opens us up to the impact that we can have on the world around us.
Stanley’s church does a fantastic job of drawing in people because it appeals to the lowest common denominator (that’s the “wide” part of the book’s title). That sounds bad. I don’t mean it to sound bad, or as a criticism even.
The bottom line is that Stanley is a fantastic communicator (for the most part, we all slip up from time to time), and he presents a compelling message for people who have little to no church background. I’m sure they also do a great job on discipleship (that’s the “deep” part of the book’s title).
But what he is saying here is that to be an effective communicator, we have to be able to recognize and appeal (to a certain degree) to that base level of humanity. We can’t disciple people we can’t reach.
The first step every church needs to take is to exegete it’s community to discover what needs the church could be meeting. In this way, we begin to connect on the most basic level, and we see that perception is reality.
