Six Degrees of Separation
From the Series—Influence: The Power of One
March 14, 2002By the end of this evotional, you’ll never think of evangelism the same way. Take a few minutes to think outside the box.
In the 1960’s, psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a fascinating experiment that gave birth to the concept known as “six degrees of separation” or “the small world phenomenon.” He got the names of 160 people living in Omaha, Nebraska and sent them a chain letter in the mail. In the letter was the name of a stockbroker in Boston, Massachusetts. Each person who received the letter was instructed to add their name to the chain letter and send it to a friend or acquaintance who he or she thought would get the packet closer to the stockbroker in Boston. For example, if they knew a stockbroker or someone living near Boston, they might send them the letter. The idea was that when the chain letter finally got into the stockbroker’s hands, he could calculate how many steps it took to get there. He ultimately wanted to see how closely we are connected. Milgram found that it took, on average, six steps or less. Everyone on the planet is connected by approximately six mutual acquaintances.
That has huge implications when it comes to influence, evangelism and the Great Commission. In Mark 16:15, Jesus said, “Go into all the word and preach the good news to all creation.” Jesus told us what to do--"go into all the world” and “preach the good news to all creation.” But like so many other instances in Scripture, how we do it is left up to us.
E-vangelism
Jesus lived during a time in history when the average person didn’t travel outside a thirty mile radius of their home. The primary mode of transportation was walking. Some scholars have retraced the travels of Jesus and estimated that he logged 15,000 miles on foot.
Fast forward 2000 years. The way we “go into all the world” has changed. We have planes, trains, and automobiles. If you can afford a ticket, the Concorde can get you from New York to Paris in three hours and forty-five minutes flat. But the fastest and least expensive mode of transportation in the third millennium is surfing. Anne Hind says, “Internet age kids are crossing oceans and continents before they can cross the street.” One click and you can be halfway around the world in nanoseconds. What does that have to do with the Great Commission? We assume that “going into all the world” includes Zimbabwe and Siberia and Cambodia. But could it also include cyberspace? In Luke 14:23, Jesus said, “Go into the highways and byways, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.” Does the super-information “highway” qualify? Maybe the Internet presents the greatest opportunity any generation has ever had to “go into all the world”? Leonard Sweet says, “The Web puts the globe into the hands of every human being.”
Zoom out and look through a wide angle lens. Where and when you were born was no accident. Acts 17:26 says that God determined the exact time and exact place where each of us would live. I can’t imagine a more exciting time in history to be alive. People living a hundred years ago couldn’t begin to imagine the way life has changed. In his novel, Timeline, Michael Crichton says,
“If you were to say to a physicist in 1899 that in 1999, a hundred years later, moving images would be transmitted into homes all over the world from satellites in the sky…that antibiotics would abolish infectious disease…that millions of people would take to the air every hour in aircraft capable of taking off and landing without human touch…that you could cross the Atlantic at two thousand miles an hour…that humankind would travel to the moon, and then lose interest…that microscopes would be able to see individual atoms…that people would carry telephones weighing a few ounces, and speak anywhere in the world without wires…if you said all this, the physicist would almost certainly pronounce you mad.”
I Chronicles 12:32 singles out the tribe of Issachar and says that they “understood the times” and “knew what Israel was to do.” Understanding the times is one dimension of spirituality! We are called to be change experts and change agents. We can’t afford to be reactive or irrelevant. Understanding the times is the key to relevancy. And if we aren’t relevant we aren’t heard--we’re like the proverbial tree that falls in the forest with no one to hear it. Does it make a sound?
Word of Mouse
Jesus said, “Preach the good news to all of creation.” Jesus lived at a time in history when the only real means of communication was “word of mouth.” And word of mouth is powerful. There is a seismic shift happening in the marketing world. Many marketers are moving away from conventional marketing and back to “word or mouth” marketing. George Silverman says, “Word of mouth is at least 1000 times as powerful as conventional marketing.”
E-mail is exponential word of mouth. Hotmail went from 0 to 12 million subscribers in 18 months! They did it with a simple tag line at the end of each e-mail. “Get your free e-mail at Hotmail.com.” Emanuel Rosen says, “The Internet accelerates buzz…it is good old word-of-mouth marketing, at Internet speed.”
Imagine the amount of time and money it would take to write 100 letters or make 100 telephone calls. But there is no difference between sending an e-mail to one person or a hundred people in a group list. Our weekly e-votional is e-mailed to hundreds of people, some of whom live halfway around the world, with one click of the mouse. And it’s as easy for you to forward the e-votional to your e-mail list as it is to delete--God forbid :)
Login
Exactly one week before I was born, October 29, 1969, the first e-mail message was send on the precursor to the Internet, the ARPANET. A UCLA student named Charley Kline typed the word “LOGIN” and the world has never been the same. In the next half hour, 154 million e-mail messages will be sent and received. In the next 24 hours, 2 million new web pages will be added to the Internet. In the next 100 days, the number of people connected to the Internet will double.
In his book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman shares a story about his seventy-nine mother that illustrates the impact of the Internet. He telephoned his mother who lives in Minneapolis and she sounded upset. He asked her, “What’s wrong?” She said, “I’ve been playing bridge with three Frenchmen and they keep speaking French to each other and I can’t understand them.” Friedman chuckled at the thought of his 79 year-old mother playing bridge on the Internet with three Frenchmen. She said, “Don’t laugh, I was playing bridge with someone in Siberia the other day.” Who would have ever thought? A seventy-nine year old woman playing bridge on the Internet with people half way around the world in real-time.
This week I got an e-mail offer for software that will automatically translate my English e-mails into six other languages. Scribes used to devote an entire lifetime to copying one text of Scripture. Missionaries would travel to the ends of the earth to translate Scripture into new languages. Yet the day is coming when real-time translation will eliminate language barriers.
Leonard Sweet says, “WWW is creating a social space that will connect everyone on the planet in 10-20 years.” Maybe churches ought to spend less time building buildings and more time building websites? George Barna goes so far as to say that “The future of the church lies in the Internet itself...millions of people who will never travel physically to a church, will instead roam the Internet is search of spiritual experiences.”
I’m not suggesting that the Internet is a replacement for missions. But it is a supplement. A church that webcasts is no longer a “local” church. It’s a missionary enterprise. A chat room is not a replacement for church. But it is a supplement. I’d be shocked if someday, some of our community groups didn’t meet in chat rooms. Leonard Sweet says, “Spirituality is shaped by technology. Always has been. Always will be.” And if the church is going to thrive in the 21st century, we need to “understand the times” so we “know what to do.”
Sneezers
On May 3, 1999, Adam Frankl “sneezed.” He posted a game called Roger Wilco on a freeware website. He invited people to try it for free and then forward it to as many friends as they wanted so they could play it together. In 24 hours, the game was downloaded by 2,800 people in 46 countries. In 30 days, 100,000 people had downloaded the game.
Seth Godin says, “Sneezers are at the core of any ideavirus.” The greatest ideavirus, by the way, is the gospel hands down! He says, “Sneezers are the ones who when they tell 10 or 20 or 100 people--people believe them.”
Oprah is a sneezer. Every book she has ever recommended has hit the best-seller list. She makes millionaires. Warren Buffet is a sneezer. He is probably the most celebrated stock picker of the last quarter century. When he buys a stock, thousands of others follow suit.
Sneezing is actually a Biblical concept. In his book, The Influentials: People who Influence People, Gabriel Weimann traces the concept all the way back to Numbers 11:14. Moses says, “I cannot carry all these people by myself; the burden is too heavy for me.” And the Lord said to Moses, “Bring me seventy of Israel’s elders who are known to you as leaders and officials among the people.” Elders had the largest circles of influence. They were the sneezers. When they spoke people listened. The Lord says, “They will help you carry the burden of the people so that you will not have to carry it alone.” George Silverman says, “Give me the one right person to start and I’ll change the world.” He calls it the law of the fountainhead influencer.
The average person has 50 addresses in their e-mail list. If you were to forward this e-votional to everyone in your e-mail list today, and tomorrow, those 50 people forwarded the e-votional to everyone in their e-mail list, and the cycle was repeated each day. Your “e-sneeze” could hypothetically reach everyone on the Internet within a week!
Gesundheit!
If you have the time, here’s one final thought.
“Selling” vs. “Sharing”
“We loved you so much that we were delighted to share not only the
gospel of God but our lives as well.”
The key word is in I Thessalonians 2:8 is “share.” Think in toddler terms. To help those of you who aren’t parents, let me “share” an e-mail I recently received titled “Introduction to property law from a toddler’s perspective.”
If I like it, it’s mine
If I can take it away from you, it’s mine
If it looks like mine, it’s mine
If I saw it first, it’s mine
If you’re having fun with it, it’s mine
If you lay it down, it’s mine
If it’s broken, it’s yours
Can you think of anything more selfish than trying to keep God to yourself? Evangelism is a willingness to share God with others. It’s important to distinguish between “selling” and “sharing.” Selling is an attempt to get someone to buy something. But how can you sell something that’s free? Salvation is “shareware.” We aren’t “selling” anything and that takes the pressure off. Evangelism is as simple as sharing.
I Thessalonians 2:8 reveals two dimensions of evangelism: sharing the gospel and sharing our lives. Sharing the gospel is the easy part. It’s sharing our lives that it tough. I think George Hunter is right when he says, “Faith is about three-quarters caught and one-quarter taught.”
Jesus shared his life--24/7 for three years! Then after three years of blood, sweat, and tears, Jesus gave his disciples the litmus test in Matthew 16:15. “Who do you say that I am?” Think about the sequence. Now let me ask you a question. Which comes first: believing or belonging? I think most churches give the litmus test first. If you believe, then you can belong. And that makes sense on one level. But maybe we have it backwards?
Maybe the church ought to be a place where everyone is welcome. Maybe it ought to be a place where people can see firsthand how we love one another and worship God. Maybe if we invited more people to belong, more people would believe. Isn’t it ironic that “community” is such a big “selling-point,” yet we don’t let people belong to the community until they believe. It’s like a car salesmen saying, “No test-drives.” Doesn’t that seem counter-productive?
I think one reason we put believing before belonging is because it’s easier that way. Then all you have to do is share the gospel. You don’t have to share you life! But when we reverse the sequence--put believing before belonging--it undermines the gospel. Jesus invited Judas to belong. Three years later he was betrayed. Are we willing to invest three years of our lives in someone who might not believe? That’s at the heart of evangelism. I think George Hunter is right when he says, “For most people, belonging comes before believing…evangelism is about helping people belong so that they can believe.”