Attention Pleas

May I have your attention, please?

This is the question that fuels the engine of the emerging economy. Every marketing firm knows that the battle is won or lost based on whether it can capture a slice of a person’s time and attention.

Did you know that the world of television advertising is going through a mega-shift? Due to new video recording technology, more and more people are recording shows and skipping commercials. Television networks could lose their commercial sponsorship and go out of business. The trillion-dollar question is how to get viewers to choose to watch a commercial for a sponsor’s product. You can bet that some innovative mechanisms will be created to control and measure people’s attention — attention that will become increasingly precious.

Did you know that Google — the world’s leading online search engine — offers a program to any Web-site owner anywhere in the world, called AdSense? If you let Google place ads on your Web site for products and services that have some affinity with your Web-site content, they will pay from one cent to several cents every time a Web surfer simply clicks on that ad, whether they buy anything or not. Not only is this becoming for many Third-World individuals with personal Web sites a lucrative source of family income (well exceeding their country’s per capita average income), it is also the largest source of income for the multibillion-dollar Google corporation. Your attention is valuable!

Did you know that every time we publish an article in Light & Life our staff spends hours laboring and debating over just the right title, illustration and design for the pages? Why? We have less time than it takes to flip to the next page to capture most readers’ attention.

Your attention is valuable. Someday you may be able to purchase products by paying with attention rather than cash. Actually this has been happening for years on a limited basis. For example, resort condo developers will give you three nights of free lodging if you will give their salesman two hours of your attention to listen to a sales pitch. Soon this will be viewed as Stone Age marketing compared to what computer chip technology is ready to make possible.

The sci-fi movie Minority Report gives us a glimpse into this fast-approaching future. In one scene the main character, played by Tom Cruise, walks down a city sidewalk and into a shopping area. He is surrounded by animated billboards that can scan his identity and instantly play an advertisement based on his tastes and buying habits. Unbelievable? Not really.

In just a few short years, technology will be able to detect and measure everything to which we give our attention at the very moment we are passing by. Even now some marketing firms justify exorbitant fees based on how many “eyes” they deliver to their clients.

It is within this emerging high-tech, attention-measuring world that the church is trying to function. I recently spoke with a friend and fellow pastor from central Africa now living among central African expatriates in America. “What’s the biggest challenge you face?” I asked. He answered without hesitation: “So many distractions. So much activity grabbing their attention. It is hard to get them to give any time to the things of God.”

The danger is that the church will fall into the trap of thinking we have to compete with the world in this attention Armageddon. But we must not give in to the temptation.

Recently I was studying the miracle of Peter and John healing the lame beggar who sat outside the temple pleading for coins from incoming worshipers (Acts 3). It occurred to me that if we are not careful, the roles will reverse. The church might become the lame beggar outside the temples of the gods of sports and entertainment, pleading for scraps of people’s attention as they pass by. Sometimes it feels like that is what we already are.

Let’s remember the mystery of the kingdom. People will be drawn to Jesus Christ when we give our attention to Jesus fully. Not when we try to wrestle their attention away from sports. When we simply go about our business of lifting Jesus up in worship, faithfully teaching and obeying the Word, loving one another with pure hearts, and sacrificially and supernaturally ministering to the poor, the world will notice.

A Holy Spirit-empowered community of remarkable love — God’s way of creating a witness — doesn’t have to plead for attention. If that’s what we really become, that’s a zillion pixels better than a Google ad.