I was thinking the other day about the push and pull dynamics of communication. What I mean by push is that the communicator takes a message and pushes it to his or her intended audience. If we’re honest with ourselves, that’s probably our default mode.
Personally, when I tweet or blog or teach a workshop, I’m pushing. I do it every day. I construct a message and I send it. The same probably goes for your church. You construct sermons, videos, bulletins, curriculum, and more that push:
Here’s what we’re going to study this spring.
Here’s what this passage means.
Here’s how we’re going to serve our community.
Here’s what we need from you.
There’s nothing wrong with push communication. In many ways, this is the job of communicators, leaders, and artists. But I believe we miss out on the richness and diversity of our communities when we exclusively practice push communication.
The people around us are full of ideas, insights, needs, struggles, hopes, dreams, fears, and so much more. But we don’t know because we don’t pull those things out of them. Those sentences I listed above — the push examples — notice how they all end with periods. Pull communication requires that we use a few question marks:
What would you like to study this spring?
What does God reveal to you in this passage?
How can we serve our community?
What do you need from us?
I hope you see the difference, and I hope you’ll give some thought to the difference pull communication can make if you’re willing to incorporate it into your overall communications mix. Oh, and it should be noted that effective pull communication requires one other thing besides asking questions: you have to really listen to the responses you get.
Scott McClellan is the Editor of Echo Hub and the Director of Echo Conference. Follow him on Twitter: @scottmcclellan.