What would you say? Who has more sway? Professional athletes or faith leaders?
When it comes to Twitter, it’s pretty clear:
Faith leaders have great influence as they dominated the Twitterverse.
However, a recent Barna Group study revels that:
“…the majority of Americans consider professional athletes more influential than faith leaders.”
Are you surprised?
I was initially.
“Of the 1,008 American adults surveyed by the research organization, nearly two-thirds (64 percent) said professional athletes hold more sway on society than professional faith leaders. Only 19 percent said the opposite was true, while eight percent said the two groups share equal amounts of influence and another 10 percent were unsure.”
The idea that Tim Tebow or Joe Flacco have more influence than a faith leader was really surprising to me. Isn’t the goal of faith leaders, or any leader for that matter, to have influence?
Too Much Info
If you don’t have any influence, than you’re not leading.
As I began to think about this more, my conclusion is this:
Too much information.
Faith leaders are writing books, Tweeting, blogging, broadcasting, podcasting and being interviewed on television. Is it possible that all of this technology and all of these mediums is over-saturating the marketplace of ideas to the point of being ignored? Is there too much noise?
Quality vs Quantity
Mind you, this is just a theory. I’ve got nothing concrete to back this up. I’ve noticed that on Twitter–a social media channel I’m very active on–I get a fair share of replies and RTs. While on Facebook, I hardly do anything. Facebook has become very congested and I’m not very active on it. However, when I am active on Facebook, I have all kinds of responses! I’ve put in a fraction of the energy, but yielded a heavy response. I can’t help but wonder if the same dynamic is going on.
As we all work hard to drive-up our number of pageviews, RTs, +1s and shares, let’s be careful that we don’t shoot ourselves in the foot and render our stream of messages impotent.
Should we spending more time on the quality of our message oppose to the quantity?
[via Christian Post | Comic via Inherit the Mirth]
Adam Shields says
I don’t give Barna much weight any more because they seem to be more about generating their own page views and Christian propaganda more than good polling.
But I also question this specific result. The questions are about whether you think that professional athletes have more sway than religious leaders, but not actually whether they do or not. Professional athletes have a lot of facetime, but make virtually no difference in the lives of the average person.
But the average pastor makes a pretty big difference in the lives of the congregation they serve and often in the greater community.
Eric Dye says
Good call, Adam.
Tyler Scott Hess says
Maybe this is on a national level. I am betting that a lot more people know Tebow than those who know my pastor, but guess who influences me on a personal level? The guy you’ve never heard of…and I don’t trust many of the more “famous” pastors. Marketing books has little to do with correct theology.
leahadassah says
Good question? perhaps, maybe, athletes do have more influence; however, the deeper questions of concern, at least it seems to me, should be …..what kind of influence do they have, if they do in actuality have any? Furthermore, is that influence conducive for positive human flourishing?
Eric Dye says
What do YOU think?