Chris Brogan has a fascinating post, Communications in a Post Media World. He begins by saying,

When Google is the front door, the side door, the hidden key under the mat, the cash register, the finder of everything we ever lost, and everything we wished we’d lost, what comes next? When everyone is a newspaper, a magazine, a TV station, a radio station, a conference, a curator, an educator, a business owner, a shopkeeper, what do we have? When you and I are the creators, the consumers, and the collaborators of this media, what does this mean to us?

The gatekeepers are still out there. Neither you nor I can write for the New York Times or put a film up on the BBC. We can’t just bind up our book and stick it on the shelf at Waterstones or Chapters. We can’t waltz into any giant corporation and offer up our products.

Maybe we’re just preachers and nonprofit types. Maybe we just want to reach people like us in all this noise. How do we connect? This might just be the wilderness of a million signals, the atomization of the world’s voices, the fall of the tower of Babel. Again.

Check out his entire post, as it is a great challenge for us to think how communication has changed, and how we must re-think how we can communicate more effectively in what he describes as a “post media world.”

I really like the term that he (and some others) is using. As a former college pastor, and a current youth ministry/pastoral care mentor/trainer I have been thinking about communication using a slightly different term.

How do we communicate in a postmodern world? Some will debate whether or not there is such a thing as postmodernity. Others will see it as simply a tool, philosophy, theology, ethos that one can choose, or choose not to gravitate towards. I happen to believe that postmodernity is real (I know some of you are saying duh..haaa), and that it’s not an option for us to decide whether or not we will or will not think of how to communicate more effectively to it. It’s not just a worldview, but its in the air we breathe…you don’t have to like it, but with that in mind, I’m wondering how communication has changed in a postmodern world?

If we are in “post media world” as Brogan and others suggest….and if postmodernity is alive and well, then how can we use the technology, the social media tools, and craft a message, story, communication that reaches those who we are trying to reach?

I don’t have a detailed answer to give you. You might have one, and I hope you share. But I’m definitely thinking through the rapidly changing world that is brought on by the reduction of hierarchy through social media tools, and what implications that has (especially for those of us in ministry) for us as we think about communicating the gospel in a noisy world. If we all have the ability to share and communicate a message, just not personally, but online, how do we effectively communicate it without getting lost?

Which begs a bigger question that I was thinking about after reading Brent Thomas (@brent_thomas) Tweet the other day.

“if the message isn’t attractive, & the people of God aren’t attractive, then we must not be telling or living the story right”
07:06 AM November 10, 2008 from txt

In a “post media/postmodern world” are we telling the right story effectively? Are we even telling the story? Is the gospel story more attractive than the other competing stories? And are we expecting only pastors, clergy, ministry leaders to communicate the story, or are all of us communicating the story of how God has transformed our lives?

Last, what do churches do when they are no longer the front door to the gospel? Do we even realize that the physical building isn’t the front door anymore, but that the online world is the front door? If you don’t have a strong presence, or aren’t telling a good story online, which is the front door–will you be able to bring people from the online world, to the physical front door of the church?