Some of you may read the title and ask “has Jason gone nuts”, or is he going to focus on church?  Not necessarily but close enough. This blog is about our effect of communicating to those who don’t share our views or might be on the fence about issues they face today.  When I was younger the priest of my church (father O) delivered a sermon about preaching to the choir. The main idea of the sermon was that we spend most of our time speaking to those who are on the same page as us.  We go to great lengths to prove our point to each other when we should be speaking to those in the middle, those ten or so percent that haven’t made their mind up yet in all do deference to Father O.  As radical as he was, he was completely right realizing that his venue of Sunday mornings was just the beginning to the idea of spreading the “ministry” to the outside world.

I’m sure you are wondering why this topic? As I’m sitting in my room during this tornado warning I was listening to a couple of students who were debating the issues of the 2008 presidential election. So I asked them both “why are you arguing these issues when you are both correct, and why are you not talking to others about these issues”?  They laughed at me and said” Jason it’s useless and people just doesn’t care”.  Is that true? I think people do care I personally feel that the ten percent is larger than we think but we all have our friends segmented so that we cannot debate the  issues.  You have your sports friends, your clubbing/bar friends , your political/intellectual friends and your religious friends, in which we don’t want  lines to bleed because we do not want to debate the issues that need to be discussed  and most likely some part of you probably likes the division.  During this election process we are supposed to be experiencing “change” and we cannot afford to keep those lines. 

So why do we preach to the Choir? To be honest it’s easy. We know that we can speak and be judged a little but it won’t be as challenging as taking on the opposition and the undecided. I don’t think we are scarred as much since we have settled into a point where it is the best option.   Who is the choir? The choir is those who already know the message, those who already know what is at stake and what is needed to get those areas changed. 

So where are you preaching?  This is not me preaching and I do not claim to be perfect but a work in progress. Therefore I do what is easy rather than challenge myself and that is why I began to write this to remind myself of the magnitude of this era we are living in.  This is a principle time in which we can move forward, stay stagnant or even worse regress.  What do you want to happen?