Thursday, October 07, 2004

How do you make a big splash?

(Or - the Rock-Throwing Theory) Consider throwing a rock into the water, the impacting splash would be the result of: 1. How big is the rock, 2. How deep/wide is the water body, 3. The appropriate contact point (don't miss the middle of the lake), and 4. Then there also need to be enough clearing space for the aftershock waves to be spread. If you throw a pebble instead of a rock, you will make wave but not splash. But if you add more and more mass to a small rock, it will grow into a boulder, and the effects of the splash would even be bigger. This explained why events with more preparation are not only more enjoyable but also often make more impact. If you have big event but have no depth (for example where people don't know each other and don't participate) then the event was just a rock throw in a puddle of water, barely making any splash. But if we have much more depth (where people know each other, where they personally committed some stakes into the event) then the body of water will be wider and deeper and the splash would be possible. If you get both of the above but aim for the shallow end, you won’t make a splash either. This is why we need to be very intentional in our planning process. We need to think through the whole event and how it hit the target audience. Finally, if there are not enough clearing space around the lake, say too many trees in the surrounding, then the splash would not be felt far away from the impact point. Often, we fail to build the anticipation leading up to the event and the follow up for post-event processing. The big lake is the community of faith. It needs to be wide open with relationship among each other and it needs to be deep in authentic relationship with God. We must continually foster the environment space to anticipate and process rocking events. Rocks are ministry events, which got thrown by our heavenly Father into the lake all the time to make waves. Really big one like asteroid, once happens will change the landscape forever. But smaller ones got thrown by God's hand via ministry and individuals all the times and their accumulative impacts are not less important. No matter what size of rock God gave us to throw, we need to maximize its effectiveness by faithfully consider all four factors of the rock throwing theory. Now, only if I can back up this theory with Biblical support...

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home