Some of the challenges that I am exposed to in the Media Course I am doing now

Just a few summarized points to give you an indication... Help!

I was confronted with the Question: What is our Long Term Purpose; Our Vision  and Mission Statement?

Clarity of purpose insures long-term viability.

We all know that a good mission statement should accurately explain why your organization exists and what it hopes to achieve in the future. It articulates the organization's essential nature, its values, and its work. Writing a purpose statement takes vision. It takes revelation. It is not about wordsmithing to create platitudes. It is the cornerstone of a ministry. It will be your lighthouse to guide you through a fog.

• Vision statement: What would we see if we succeeded?
• Mission Statement: Why we exist? For whom? How do you deliver it? Why it’s valuable? 

Phrases that touch my imagination and stretch my thinking:

• Essential “agenda setting” states: “You don’t tell people what to think, but what to think about.”
• In John 6:44-45 Jesus says: “No one can come to me unless the Father draws him…and they will be taught of God. Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.” If people are being called of God, God will be their teacher.
• Knowing that the Father is drawing people to himself, it seems logical to find those who are being called and enter into the work of the Father. This is why the follow-up system is important. You are working with the Father.
• Start with the follow-up system and then build content that teases out people in whom the Father is working. Content is important, but only to the degree that you get people to engage in post-media conversations.
• What if our Content was driven by our Follow Up Strategy?

• If we have great content, but no real plan or process to engage with our audiences, we’ll miss our true objectives. Conversely, if we have a great process but our content doesn’t connect with our audience, we’ll miss our mark. 

• Low-level vs High-level Decision Making: What am I busy doing?

On low-level decision-making someone adds something to their current belief structure. This is likened to a strategy that attempts to persuade someone to buy a car or add Jesus by checking a "I received Christ" box. 

In high-level decision-making a person becomes, well, a different person. In high-level decision-making, a person’s identity structure is altered. This is very different than “adding to” an already established identity. 

• New Media - A Paradigm Shift...a “third wave of communication”

A simple definition for New Media: It refers to on-demand access to content anytime, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, and creative participation. It differentiates from broadcast, internet, or oratorical media.

New media is about being customer centric, or in our case, seeker centric.

Where in the past, content was controlled by the media developer, now content is controlled by the user’s choice.

In other words, people will search for content instead of passively consuming media that are fed to them. The seeker’s media experience is an essential element in a communication strategy. If your content is not relevant to their needs, then the seeker will simply “tune you out.”

As people are limited by both cognitive capacity and time they therefore will only consume media that fits their needs in their timeframe. Since consumers have a limited attention span, then they quickly forget the message if it is not immediately applicable to them. This is what is called “recency and regency” (recent time and importance) of a media message.

By nature, New Media is data driven. Every step in the process needs to be measured and evaluated. If a person “hits” on your media (listens, buys, tunes in, lands on your page, goes to your Facebook, etc.) it is because they want to. 

Here is the big lesson here. The positive flip side is that if someone consumes your media, it is because they are interested, seekers, who identify themselves by consuming your media – that is, if it meets their need.

• The 2½ percent principle: Both statistical theory and social research observe that at least 2½ percent of any society are at any time open for religious change, no matter how resistant they are.

• A New Purpose Statement? “To use any and all media as a means of identifying Muslims who are searching for a religious alternative.”

Look to an example: 

• Not feeling the constraint to be directly evangelistic in media products but to provide ways for seekers to contact the organization; media options that secular national mass media organizations found were acceptable to be aired... to develop several “specials” that highlighted social problems and how the love of God through Christ could help people to overcome those issues. For example, in 2000 Jesus film Millennium project the gospel was clearly presented on national television. Yet in a country of over 100 million inhabitants, only a few more than 100 people responded. 
• Applying the new strategy in 2002, a television special about a woman who was impregnated after a rape and the shame that resulted from her being pregnant outside wedlock, and that God through Christ could meet her deepest felt need, the respondents from Muslim backgrounds exceeded 117,000. The most important role was to do the follow-up of the Muslim respondents.
• Less than 2% of the respondents had theological questions, whereas over 28% just wanted to know that God cared for them, 24% were people looking for prayer to overcome health or family matters.

Suggestions for Field Leaders 

1. Proper use of media. The principle is: “people use media and not media uses people.” ... media products that are used among resistant peoples for persuasion will most often fail in converting them to Christ, but media products can be used effectively to identify the 2 ½ percent who are open for religious change. ... Field leaders should to spend time and money in developing follow-up systems rather than developing a slick gospel product.

2. Innovators will be first responders:  innovators will be greater media consumers than the population at large, and will be more open to new ideas. They will be attracted to the foreign missionary since the innovator thinks in broader categories than the average person. The innovator can be confused as the “man of peace” since he/she obviously “gets it.”; innovators can be a gateway into a network of “bunch of guys.” Spending time with them, can be strategic, but for seeing them as a link to the opinion leader. The evangelist should be searching for the group leader. Most likely the aberrant group has been discussing their dissatisfaction with the status quo. Apply the “good-news” to their questions;....people were not asking theological questions but they were asking if God cared for them.

3. Teach them as a group “If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather the wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.";... the aberrant group finds their restlessness in the fact that the majority religion does not satisfy their soul. In additional research that LETMI conducted, 26% of Muslims have experienced a dream or vision in which a “prophet or being of light” spoke to them in the night.  These groups are looking for someone to help them make sense of their restless soul. Help the group as a group keeps the bonds tight and the vision alive.... The missionary should concentrate on the group “leader” who will the teach others (2 Timothy 2:2). .. gathering the leaders together with an “outsider” church planter as a facilitator of discussions allowed the group to teach one another. This kept the “teaching” from being foreign and kept the vision alive. Allow the scriptures and the Holy Spirit to be the main teachers, with the evangelist as a guide, and methods of expansion into the “majority” will emerge as they learn to love the “vast and endless sea.” 

• This Course exposure is very helpful for me as I am busy rethink our methodology and think about making new or existing mission/vision statements stronger and more applicable.
• We learn about the chatbot system: A robot questionnaire to discover the Cornelius (Acts 10) contacts. More strategic than some other media strategy as it can lead to groups and households in stead of just individuals.

Two Processes that help

• STROATE A process that helps us think about a range of decisions and ideas from the Big Picture to Evaluation. • Strategic Purpose • Tactical Goals/Objectives • Resources • Opportunities • Activities • Timetable • Evaluate
• “SMART” S - specific; M - measurable; A - agreed-upon (achievable?); R - relevant; T - time-bound