Another excerpt from the 1975 classic “WHAT’S GONE WRONG WITH THE HARVEST” by James Engel.
Is Anyone Out There Listening?
In recent years the authors have had opportunity to present the concept of the effectiveness cycle (Figure 1) to Christian leaders throughout the world. A common response is, “Did you know that you were describing my situation when you mentioned effectiveness crisis?” Why is effectiveness crisis so commonplace? While there are many surface causes, the root factor is communication breakdown. Two particular manifestations of it are examined in this chapter: (1) one-way communication and (2) program orientation.
ONE-WAY COMMUNICATION
Tom Bartlett, like many other pastors, is message-centered. This means that he gives great importance to polishing his sermons, Bible lessons, and other presentations so that there is no question of biblical inaccuracy. This, of course, is commendable and is the characteristic of anyone who is truly concerned with presenting the message of Jesus Christ. Difficulty enters, however, when one places the focus on the message to the virtual disregard of the audience itself.
When pushed to extreme, a message-centered approach will lead to such strategies as door-to-door distribution of Bibles and tracts, or even to contemplation of a worldwide satellite making possible the reading of Bible passages anywhere on the globe. Such strategies can be effective, of course, but there is no guarantee that they will be. One essential question remains unanswered: What response is there in the lives of the viewers or hearers?
Much of our effort, then, is only one-way communication — the message is sent from the pulpit, over the air, in print, or in person; but the response on the other end is only a secondary consideration. Effective communication, on the other hand, requires that we simultaneously be both message-and audience-centered. The person on the other end has full opportunity to ignore us if he wishes. The apostle Paul, as a master communicator, was both message- and audience-centered: “Yes, whatever a person is like, I try to find common ground with him so that he will let me tell him about Christ and let Christ save him” (1 Cor. 9:23 Living Bible).
Examine Figure 2 carefully. In cartoon form, it summarizes a wealth of research from linguistics, psychology, and other behavioral sciences.1 It makes clear that people see and hear what they want to see and hear, and this can be devastating to the one-way communicator.
(Figure 2. Communication or Chaos?)
Notice, first of all, that the message may have no effect whatsoever through being avoided, not attended to, miscomprehended, or not retained. Initially the message activates one or more of the senses. We may say, then, that the individual is exposed. Then the message is processed within the central nervous system and the person at this point can exercise a God-given capacity to screen out its content entirely if he so desires.
The point is that God has given each of us a filter through which all incoming stimuli are processed. During and immediately after exposure, the filter undertakes a preliminary processing stage in which the message is analyzed and categorized in such terms as pitch, color, etc., largely on the basis of physical properties. But then further analysis takes place — the analysis for pertinence. The filter now works to prevent further processing of stimuli that are not seen to be consistent with attitudes, needs, and lifestyle. This is done in several ways. First, the message can be rejected altogether by filtering it out through selective attention. It is simply ignored. If attention is attracted anyway, as it often is, the filter then can work through miscomprehension or selective forgetting.
Assume, for the moment, that you are watching your favorite television program. Does your filter process every commercial that bids for your attention? Obviously not, or we might consider you a candidate for psychoanalysis. On the average, this is what happens: Out of every one hundred people who are actually exposed to a television commercial (they do not leave the room or divert their attention elsewhere),
Thirty actually attend to its content; i.e., they know what is being said; Fifteen understand the content (one half of those who attended to it initially); and only five retain its content in active memory twenty-four hours later. This is a graphic illustration of how the human perceptual filter selectively screens incoming information. These kinds of effects are not confined to the commercial world. There are thousands of published and unpublished studies documenting selective screening in all phases of life — politics, education, and business, among others.2
It should not be assumed, therefore, that religious communication is immune from selective perception. Since the early 1970s a number of empirical studies by the students and staff at the Billy Graham Graduate Program in Communications at Wheaton College; Daystar Communications, Inc., in Nairobi, Kenya; Tyndale House Publishers; and others document that people also see and hear what they want to see and hear in that arena as well. For example, it was discovered that most of the Bibles distributed to a particular group of people found their way into the trash can. Another organization found to its dismay that no more than 6,500 out of a possible total listening audience of nearly 8,000,000 tuned to its religious programming on FM radio. Finally, this also happens within the church in that large segments within many congregations show the same patterns of unmet needs that proved to be such a shock to Tom Bartlett at Rolling-wood First Church.
The Causes of Selective Screening
Selective screening takes place for two fundamental reasons, the first of which is the noise barrier. In the developing countries of the world there is an ever-increasing progression of society toward becoming over communicative. Attempts to influence the individual come from all sides, and the result is an exceedingly high noise level that any given communicator can penetrate only with difficulty. People must, of necessity, develop defenses against these attempts at persuasion, or the consequences will be future shock —the distress, both physical and psychological, that arises from an overload of the human organism’s physical adaptive systems and its decision-making process. Put more simply, future shock is the human response to over stimulation. 4
Therefore, it can be quite a task even to attract attention, because the message is simply drowned out. For this reason alone, attention-attracting techniques, such as dramatic graphics, color, sounds, or movement are often resorted to.
Even if the noise barrier is overcome, there is the profound effect of the change barrier. God has created the filter to provide a means of protection against unwanted influence. He knew, of course, that this also could be used to screen out His voice, as is documented by frequent biblical reference to unresponsive soil and hardened hearts. Selective attention, miscomprehension, and selective retention, therefore, can result as the individual resists changes in his beliefs.
The filter itself is formed out of the person’s attitudes, beliefs, understanding, and personality. The net effect is to create a “map of the world” that profoundly affects both perception and behavior. Change in this map is resisted to the extent to which beliefs and attitudes are strongly held and are seen as providing an effective means of coping with the world. Insofar as these conditions hold, change will be resisted first of all because it often requires a reorientation that can be both painful and traumatic. Furthermore, why change if there is no felt need for change? The filter, therefore, is tightly programmed and it will close and screen out those attempts at influence that are not seen to be pertinent at a given time.
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