Скачать или смотреть Michael Scofield, “Attention Economics: Hard Lessons for the Adventist Church”

1 June 2024 |

Adventism differs from many mainstream Christian denominations in its doctrines of urgency about the second coming, and its obligation to warn the world.

This was the motivation for missionaries and evangelists for the past 160 years. A century ago, Adventist tent meetings were effective across rural America in attracting an audience, holding their attention over many evenings, and eventually bringing in converts. The evangelist’s tent was the only show in town.

The “message” must be conveyed—or at least expressed—and there’s a big difference between those things. Recently, the same message we’ve always expressed isn’t effective in conveying to a world audience that is increasingly distracted by a deluge of messages.

Thus church membership growth is stagnating, both world-wide and in North America, and will soon go negative. It already has in some areas. Some of the data is shocking. The annualized membership growth rate is approaching zero for both the world church and the North American Division (NAD). Moreover, it has already gone negative for the NAD, and for some conferences in the Pacific Union Conference.

Membership decline was never in the Adventist self-image. In the 1960s, it was inconceivable. We have also seen enrollment decline in many schools, both in absolute terms, and relative to membership. Many congregations folded or are on life support. Gray heads predominate.

Attention economics is a discipline which describes the challenge of communicating against the higher volume of noise in modern digital and communication technology.

We will survey a wide variety of expression, which may or may not clearly communicate. Some expression is deliberate, some is spontaneous, some is explicit, some is symbolic or obscure. I use the word “engagement” to describe several church member characteristics that reflect the level of cultural immersion in Adventism: the amount of time they invest in their faith weekly, their monetary donations, and whether or not they send their youth to Adventist schools.

To be successful, people who create expression must understand the audience, and tailor the expression to fit the language, symbols, and paradigm of that audience. Many traditional Adventist methods and symbols are now meaningful only to elderly Adventists.

I’ll suggest that what may work in the future is addressing micro-audiences, down to an “n” of one.

Teacher:
Michael Scofield, M.B.A., is a semi-retired consultant and speaker in the professional area of data asset management. He has numerous articles published in disciplines of data quality and data administration. He also has humor published in the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere. He has given over 822 slide lectures to a wide variety of audiences, around the world, including numerous talks to Adventist Forum chapters and thoughtful Sabbath School classes like the Adventist Today Sabbath Seminar.