SOW THE SEED WIDELY
During this past weekend's sermon, the preacher lamented a well-respected high school ministry's recent approach to target the gospel to the most popular people in schools under the assumption that if the jock and cheerleader became Christians, so would everyone. I couldn't help but make a mental connection to a recent Fast Company article that suggested an alternative to Gladwell's argument in The Tipping Point that the way to propagate an idea is to get the trend-setters to buy into it: "Is the Tipping Point Toast?"
Duncan Watts, whose book Six Degrees I read a few years back, suggests that there's no such thing as trend-setters, but that ideas and movements catch fire seemingly at random. Run a social network simulation a thousand times, and you'll get a different group of trend-carriers each time.
And so it is with the gospel. The goal of evangelism, as Guy Kawasaki points out in a secular sense but which is true in the strictest Biblical sense, is to sow the seed widely, and give God room to let grow what He wills to let grow. It may seem random to us, but there is a master plan - and a Master Planner - behind it all.
During this past weekend's sermon, the preacher lamented a well-respected high school ministry's recent approach to target the gospel to the most popular people in schools under the assumption that if the jock and cheerleader became Christians, so would everyone. I couldn't help but make a mental connection to a recent Fast Company article that suggested an alternative to Gladwell's argument in The Tipping Point that the way to propagate an idea is to get the trend-setters to buy into it: "Is the Tipping Point Toast?"
Duncan Watts, whose book Six Degrees I read a few years back, suggests that there's no such thing as trend-setters, but that ideas and movements catch fire seemingly at random. Run a social network simulation a thousand times, and you'll get a different group of trend-carriers each time.
And so it is with the gospel. The goal of evangelism, as Guy Kawasaki points out in a secular sense but which is true in the strictest Biblical sense, is to sow the seed widely, and give God room to let grow what He wills to let grow. It may seem random to us, but there is a master plan - and a Master Planner - behind it all.
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