“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds” (Romans 12:2).
In the recording room of a large radio station in Charlotte, N.C., I was cutting 30 second spots our church had purchased. A committee of our sharpest young adults had put together a package of radio ads on several stations, hoping to get our message out and make the community aware of First Baptist Church.
After our first cut, the young lady producing the spots said, “Uh, pastor. I need you to hear something.”
She fiddled with a few dials and turned up the volume on the car commercial running on the air at that moment. “That’s what the ads on this station sound like.”
The commercial was fast-paced and loud, with a drum hammering a heavy staccato beat in the background.
I said, “I’m well aware of what your station sounds like.”
She said, “Well, you will want your ad to fit in with that.”
I said, “No ma’am. That is precisely what I do not want.”
“I would like to stand out from all that.”
She agreed to do it my way—just my voice talking quietly, nothing in the background—for the first round of ads.
A month later, at the next recording session, she said, “You’re right. I was wrong. What you are doing is working very well.”
Judging by the response we were receiving from the community, she was right.
Sometimes, when I see churches falling all over themselves to look like the world and sound like the world in order to speak to the world, I shake my head.
What are they thinking?
What makes us think that the world will give the church its attention and listen to our message if we look just like it and sound like what it’s doing?
The world is lost, friend.
Let me say that again:
The. World. Is. Lost.
The world is clueless about the important stuff.
You and I are supposed to know where the line between fantasy and reality is drawn, the difference between trendy and permanent, between ephemeral and eternal.
The pagan world around us can make its own music and hyped-up talk and trendy fashions so much better than the church can. When God’s people attempt to copy the world in order to be heard by the world, we concede that what the world has is superior to what we have in Christ.
We lose the first point before the conversation has even begun.
