The other day I was sitting in a marketing presentation in which the people in the audience were told that they had done a great job of presenting their product using rational, logical approach to the sales of the product. What they encouraged us to do was to also engage the heart of the people listening to the presentation, tell stories that move people that make people want to buy, that reinforce all the logical, rational facts. This is actually really good advice and I think that engaging both the head and the heart is a good approach.
This got me thinking about the church in our culture and some of the church's recent history as well as my own experience in church's all around Denver. I don't want anyone to think I am equating the gospel or God's church as a product to be sold, however churches, in my experience, tend to choose one or the other in engaging the people in the pews/chairs. People seem to be drawn to one or the other of these options. There are people that really want to engage with the head using logic, reason, experience as the way they make decisions, move forward. If I'm honest I lean this way. There are also people who tend to lean more on the heart or emotion to make decisions. Their decisions come from the soul or spirit or an inner voice that moves them.
There are many churches in the U.S. and when you visit, you can usually tell if they are trying to persuade you or moved you based on your head or your heart. Now in my experience even the ones trying to convince people using reason and logic often fall very short of doing this based on the idea that they usually are aiming at the lowest common denominator. I find that in the suburbs of where I live most places are usually trying to convince you based on your heart and quite frankly I think this is a result of what most mass media has tried to do for years. When you watch TV you can see that most commercials are not trying to convince you to buy their product based on how awesome their product is even if they believe it is. Advertisers will try to get to your heart and make you want something so bad you have to go and get it. Church has joined this arms race for your attention and tried to play the same game is is losing badly. This is why we see stupid products from christian culture all trying to compete or play off of a popular item. For example, you will see a t-shirt with a Sprite logo but instead it says Spirit. Nice eh!
The question is, how should the church be engaging people? Should we be using the head, the heart or some combination of both? It's my submission to you that it's both. We should not leave reason, logic, intelligence for emotion and intuition nor should we just base our faith on reason and ignore the real created emotion that lives in us. I wish more churches would engage both aspects of the head and the heart although I do lean more towards the head.
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