Standing on a median strip in front of the Ernest C. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans yesterday, passing traffic drowned out the voices of the board of the National Council of Churches offering a prayer for recovery. It was a normal city scene until Wade Rathke, a local aid coordinator, pointed out where water had lapped at the windowsills of buildings and said, “This is where people laid down to die. Women, little children, those who could run no further from the water.”

Then he pointed down Convention Center Boulevard to an overpass that was named the “Bridge of Desperation.” It was one of the bridges on which New Orleaneans sought safe haven after the levees broke. Fear turned to despair when no one came to their rescue. All the images came back and I realized that the life and death drama that occurred here made this scruffy piece of land between traffic lanes sacred space.

Despite television ads to the contrary, New Orleans is not back. Yes, the casino is open and the French Quarter is a bit of its old self. But whole neighborhoods are still uninhabited. People are still living in tiny trailers. The diaspora has not begun to return in great numbers.

Stories of frustration with insurance companies and government are so common they’ve become part of local lore. Small businesses that once depended upon heavy tourist traffic are struggling. One shopkeeper told me her sales last week equalled one half day’s sales before the storm. She will close down soon.

But there is also a positive word here and I’ve heard it consistently. The religious community has made a difference. A Special Commission for the Just Rebuilding of the Gulf Coast, chaired by Bishop Mel Talbert of The United Methodist Church, reported on contacts it has had with policy-makers and local persons in the hurricane-affected area. He laid out additional work for the future.

Volunteers have helped those displaced and homeless. They have cleaned debris and gutted houses. They have continued to come in a steady stream. They work hard, and they give. To those who are no closer to getting back into their homes than they were eight months ago, this is some comfort. The awareness that they’re not forgotten is a degree of consolation.

We heard a meditation that seemed especially relevant with text from 2 Corinthians 4 in which Paul writes, “We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we’re not demoralized;…we’ve been thrown down, but we haven’t been broken.“

It rivals
Tom Sawyer’s
bamboozling
of his friends
into painting
that fence.
–Frank Rich

Sony Pictures hired a bevy of consultants to get Christians to create “teaching moments” as part of a calculated strategy to exploit controversy around the Da Vinci Code, according to Frank Rich, columnist for the New York Times. He notes Hollywood scriptwriter and former nun Barbara Nicolosi blogged that Sony coopted “legions of well-meaning Christians into subsidizing a movie that makes their own Savior out to be a sham.”

Rich sees this as a perfect metaphor for political machinations in which the conservative religious base turns out for the Republican Party but is always betrayed. He makes a strong case to support this contention.

Granting this, however doesn’t tell the whole story. Rich starts his piece by pointing to the remarkable capacity of movie executives to coopt virtually anything, including our religious sensibilities, and milk it for profit.

Some critics of the Da Vinci Code were clear about the obvious economic exploitation and called on interested inquirers to use library copies of the book, for example, to avoid adding to the coffers of the book’s author. However, unless you decided to neither buy the book nor attend the movie, it’s difficult to avoid getting pulled into the profit-making machinery. It’s just too pervasive and aggressive.

But this whole affair raises several interesting questions. Knowing that controversy feeds the coffers of those who are willing to exploit anyone and everything, is there another response concerned people can make when the next controversy looms? Now that these tactics are clear, can we find a way to deny the corporate exploiters the profit that feeds their exploitation? And will those vocal freelance religious entrepreneurs on the right who fan the flames of cultural skirmishes and who benefit from media exposure continue to be willing partners in this cooptation?

ABC’s John Stossel on 20/20 reported on governmental corruption in Africa and seemed to close out the possibility of discussing corruption in relation to developmental aid. This is a common analysis and it drew a sharp reaction from Christine Gorman at the TIME Global Health Blog. The message board for the show also has interesting discussion.

If you’ve been in the work of humanitarian aid for any length of time you’ve had to confront corruption and a host of other real and important concerns trying to do the “right thing.” The right thing is sometimes in dispute as well, of course.

But Gorman is on target when she writes, “Life is generally a lot more complex and interesting when you don’t assume you have all the answers.”

I’ve watched as a parade of people with great needs come to bishop’s offices of our denomination in African settings. They come asking for assistance to meet a current emergency. They need a bus ticket to get a loved one to a hospital. They need to bury a family member.

These are small scale, micro-requests, not at all what Stossel was talking about. But the point is, where need is great, life is far more complex than simplistic analysis can perceive. And, as Gorman says, bromides about compassion don’t cut it either. Somewhere between stopping everything because corruption exists and bromides that merely gloss over hard realities lies a middle ground that must be plowed through.

This is where the realities of human suffering meet with the realities of human exploitation. And that is complex and difficult territory. But the final destination is important. How do you get the programs and resources to people who need them, will benefit from them and are in desperate straits right now?

It is much more beneficial figure out how to do this than to report what we already know, namely, that human nature is human nature and sometimes it’s not good.

Writing for the web is different from writing for print. Matt Carlisle, a colleague at United Methodist Communications, provides helpful tips for this and many other skills unique to the digital environment in his new weblog at mattcarlisle.com.

He includes a collection of links and articles that are very useful, especially for writers like me who have been taught to write for media other than the web.

One article makes the point that we read the web screen differently than print. We don’t give it the same time and attention. Eye-tracking studies have captured how we move around the screen. It’s very helpful to know these patterns not only for writing, but also for designing web pages.

If you haven’t discovered Matt’s site yet, hop over to it and I think you’ll find something of interest.

The UNICEF State of the World’s Children 2006 report, Excluded and Invisible, is online and it’s a must-see. The wealth of information itself is reason enough to spend a lot of time with this report. But the execution of the website, which won a Webby Award, is another. It’s one of the best sites on the web for telling the story of vulnerable and invisible children. If you haven’t already done so, I recommend readers of Perspectives hop over to the link and plumb the site. I think you will be moved, informed and feel motivated to act.

Thanks to Ginny Underwood for passing the link along to me.

I’m writing this from Tallinn, Estonia. I was in a church outside Tallinn that has an outdoor two-seater toilet (If you’re too young to know what this means, it’s a hole in the ground with no running water and no heat where you take care of business in the breezy cold winds of the northern Baltic, and you do it quickly). Barely a mile down the road a tourist attraction offers wireless Internet connection. Such is the world we live in. We are wired, but lack some basic conveniences.

Here, as in Varna, Bulgaria, where I was last week, young people on the sidewalk text message each other and television programs deliver Western music, fashions and advertisements. A sign for a global marketer in Varna features attractive, scantily-clad young women in alluring poses selling clothing that offers, “Sex Apil.” I might as well be in Tenafly, New Jersey, where two weeks ago I saw the same.

Driven by images, music and experiences, a global media culture is shaping how young people perceive the world, form relationships with each other and view their place in the whole mess.

The generation coming to maturity in the digital era is fundamentally different than generations before. They are born into a world of media that allows them to be always-on and always available. They tend of think of media as the natural state of affairs, a part of the environment. This media culture is changing notions of privacy and intimacy. It’s changing how youth meet, congregate and maintain relationships. A researcher for the Barna Group, a research organization that studies religious attitudes, told a group of church agency staff recently, “The Mosaic generation (the youngest generation) values technology as a natural ally.” It’s not an add-on.

He also illustrated how the Mosaic generation perceives and processes information differently than earlier generations. This culture of image, sound and experience is changing how reality is defined and perceived.

Mosaics don’t need a beginning, middle and end to understand a story; they perceive fragments and form perceptions based on pieces that probably don’t make sense to someone who’s been taught to think in a sequential, linear way, which is everyone before the digital era. They can think episodically, which is to say, not sequentially.

The always-on engagement through media results in a capacity to filter, retain and block information in more complex but innate ability. A Barna Group study found that 98% of Mosaics in the U.S. are on-line daily, some almost non-stop. Thus, they have developed an ability to evaluate and exclude dissonant, irrelevant information in a split-second. Undoubtedly fewer youth in developing nations are online, however, in developing nations other media are shaping values and perceptions so the process of media acculturation is happening, just differently.

I was told in a recent visit to Uganda that a young person will purchase a radio and month’s supply of batteries before she will buy a mattress to sleep on. Radio is the accessible medium across Africa today, followed by text-messaging via cellphone. As the radio spectrum is opened by governments no longer able to stave off the rush of technology, societies are becoming flooded with media alternatives, all seeking an audience and competing aggressively for its attention.

What this means for the future is up for grabs. Those who can engage with these audiences at a level that communicates and offer them the experiences, information, entertainment and growth they desire will have an edge. Those who stand back and watch will be left behind.

I note that the Trinity Broadcasting Network, a freelance religious operation, has invested several million dollars in a television network targeting a youth audience. Several freelance religious broadcasters already have global operations. Some are getting into radio for youth. It’s too early to tell whether these will gain traction and find widespread acceptance. But that’s not the point.

The point is, by engaging the audience they will gather important knowledge that will position them for the future. These groups have taken the plunge. In the chaotic environment of the fast-changing media culture there is no safe harbor. They’ve enjoined the risk. Those who venture into the water must accept that they will make mistakes, learn from them, re-tool and set out again.

Fortunately, there are many more options for dipping your toes into the water today. Not all of them involve spending buckets of money. But they do require that you step in and get wet and do your best to swim in this sea of competing and conflicting messages.

I am advocating that my denomination support community radio in parts of the developing world. These stations relate to a local community, design programming based on that interaction and maintain an on-going relationship. They can convey information about how to prevent contagious diseases, how to mobilize for economic development, and encourage youth to not smoke, for example. Community radio stations are encouraging people to participate in democratic activities, including informing people about how and where to vote. They are offering information about family relationships and providing abused and battered women with information about how to get out of harmful relationships. And many are programming information about religious belief including Muslim and Christian dialogue, among many other subjects.

In the final analysis it isn’t about how much we spend, it’s about how much we care. Do we care enough about the people in our communities across the globe to try and communicate with them, listen to them, hear their concerns and offer alternative visions for abundant life today? Do we care enough to confront the culture of materialism that can only work its success by isolating us as individuals, undermining our self-esteem and offering us palliatives in place of authentic dignity, meaning and purpose? Do we dare say that life is more than the creation of desire and the meeting of that desire through consuming products and entertaining diversions? Are meaning and purpose in life gained with plastic cards that mortgage our future?

If we think and act theologically, media engagement is about how we enter the culture, embrace people in their struggles and love them.

The Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors training and media initiative of The United Methodist Church has been revealing as a mainline denomination took upon itself to reach out to a broader audience.

The people of The United Methodist Church showed generosity and wisdom that is quite remarkable by funding this campaign for two successive four-year periods, and sticking with it. That’s an unprecedented commitment for a mainline denomination.

The effort includes training to develop welcoming and hospitality skills in local congregations and a media component that includes national cable television buys, local broadcast, theater ads, radio, print and outdoor billboards plus collateral material such as door hangers, post cards and worship graphics.

It also includes an online experience with a “seeker” website as a front door to the church’s denominational website. Several things are notable about the campaign, with which I am involved, just so you know I’m not an unbiased observer. One is that the people of the church have stood behind the campaign even as it does not target them. It targets unaffiliated individuals seeking a deeper relationship with God within a community that cares for each other, seeks to make a difference in the world and provides support for families to explore faith together.

I find it fascinating that the campaign does not serve any interest group in the church and a noted theologian said it is so vapid it serves no one. In a polarized environment I wonder if this or any other promise can survive. The United Church of Christ has taken a strategy in its television advertising that satirizes rejection but it’s unclear to me if this strategy is actually bringing together people of disparate opinions, or not.

One thing is clear. It is much easier for mainline folks to be critical of any media effort than it is to come up with a creative message that communicates to a mass audience. This pattern of critical media disengagement is part of what has put the mainline where it is today–on the outside watching while others with the gumption to try are actually engaging people.

However, when local congregations in my denomination have implemented the welcoming skills they receive in training events in conjunction with a communications strategy, worship attendance has increased for first-time attenders by 17% and sustained attendance increased by 7%. Moreover, the denomination has seen a decrease in its downward slide. If we were a commercial enterprise we would be celebrating figures as respectable as these.

But there is an even more important story behind these figures. In addition to the nasty email we receive, and some of it is atrocious, we also receive powerfully moving first-person stories of messages reaching individuals at critical moments in their lives, life-saving moments. More than one person has written to say they were contemplating ending their lives and saw a message that gave them hope and they sought out spiritual guidance. This is what the messages are designed to do, reach individuals who are searching for spiritual growth and development and extending an invitation to them to seek out a local United Methodist congregation. Therefore, the messages are not for everyone, and they are not delivered across all media.

We conducted research that identified a significant number of people in the United States who yearn for a community in which they can explore questions of faith compatible with the United Methodist tradition. And we are attempting to reach them in a familiar environment.

One person told us, “I feel as if I have a hole in my soul.” The church is reaching out to people who feel they have a hole in their soul and inviting them to be part of a community in which they can stitch together a life that closes this hole. This is what I mean when I write that we must attempt to do theology through media.

The recovery of a mainline voice in the current media environment will require much more than returning to traditional broadcast media. In fact, audiences are moving from traditional media to alternative media in numbers that are worrisome to executives and editors in traditional media from television to newspapers to mass circulation magazines.

The explosion of new media doesn’t necessarily mean that the mainline should abandon traditional media. When I talked about this with Jeffrey Buntin, Sr. of the Buntin Group, a large ad agency in Nashville, he made an insightful observation. Perhaps it’s not traditional media that is dead, but the traditional uses of media that need to change. I think this is a helpful insight, not only for U.S. but also for global audiences.

We need a more flexible and multi-faceted attitude. The Internet is becoming the medium of choice for information, experience and entertainment.

The Barna Group, a research organization with particular skill in sampling evangelical faith groups, has identified the growth of micro-audiences, those niche audiences based on affinity that are now able to communicate through digital media in ways unknown until now.

Some of the key issues are:

• 
  The power of media and content has radically shifted from content providers to content users (audiences). This will mean messages can’t be pushed, they must pull the audience through engagement and dialogue with the audience.
• Going forward there will be high intolerance for irrelevant messages. The spaghetti won’t stick to the wall.
• To break through the clutter messages will need to be relevant to the interests and concerns of the audience and must be delivered in a context friendly to the audience. That friendly setting might mean a screen on a computer, television, cellphone or iPod. It might mean audio on radio (satellite, AM, FM, streamed on the web), Podcast, DVD, or cellphone. It might mean text messages, email, keywords on search engines. The list expands almost daily.
• And it will also surely mean appearing in the programming preferred by the audience, or with appropriate keywords so the user can find the message sender. It could mean print publications, direct mail, or op eds in newspapers.

The media environment is immensely more competitive, fragmented, and saturated with messages. It is requiring a style change as well as adaptation to new technologies.