Editor’s note: As part of our on-going series, Ken Cochrum shares about one of the biggest challenges facing those who want to succeed in having a strong digital presence.
Part One: Changing how we relate
Part Two: How to cut through the noise
Part Three: The Gift of analytics
Fear of Authenticity
The current reality for our organization and a lot of churches I know is that people are afraid to be authentic online. It was a growing fear five years ago as well, of course, but it’s really true now. The 24-hour news cycle is insatiable for a contextless comment, tweet, or picture. Lawyers have institutions scared to death. People get fired because of one tweet or comment on a social media feed. It’s harder to lead from the heart, to write about your heart, your family, your honest musings in a digital space. You tend to ask, “How might this be used against me?”
So as we move ahead, how do we invite our ministry to move past this fear and get real with the issues that our culture and audiences want to talk about? Our ministry wrestled with some tough social issues at our 2015 staff conference. I’d love to see us writing more on our websites with some of that edginess. We need to move that way and not just be “happy Christians.”
If you are your own person, your own brand, you can do what you want, go off on your own topics. But to do it from an institutional point of view takes a lot of courage and a lot of intentionality to think through implications. Is that what God’s calling us to? Maybe we do need to let our leaders have distinct voices. We need to have an intentional conversation about that.
What’s the tone of voice, or voices, we’re going to have going forward? What does it look like to be authentic and courageous about where God is leading us? We don’t need to take a hard-edged stance on every social issue that comes out. That doesn’t help our staff because we serve in very diverse local settings all over the globe. The proportional relevance of an issue to the constituents and churches in one country might be much higher here or vice versa.
There’s wisdom in not just being reactive. But to not have a plan makes us plain vanilla.
Being vanilla – playing it safe – is a strategy. It might be the right strategy, but it might not be. We need to have a prayerful conversation about that.
Editor’s note: Ken is the author of CLOSE: Leading Well Across Distance and Cultures.