Broad appeal

The fewer the specifics, the broader the appeal. The greater the specifics, the narrower the appeal. Accordingly, any cause or perspective that seeks to enlist others must determine what it believes to the core and non-negotiable specifics.


Strangely enough, this stream of thought was not prompted by church operations, but the modern environmental movement. Not that I am an expert on the modern environmental movement by any stretch of the imagination, it's just that I am sitting at The Co-op and avoiding working on a sermon, and that seemed a good distraction.

So the point of that first paragraph is this: In order for environmentalism to have any widespread acceptance (and hence actually have a chance to make an impact) it must lower its standards ("specifics") from the humanity-hating version lampooned in Dilbert:

The catch is that it most likely have to lower its standards below many environmentalists’' acceptable minimum (i.e. violate their non-negotiable core).

Now apply this to evangelical Christianity in a pluralistic society and this get really interesting. What are the core specifics that can not be altered or dropped without ceasing to be the Truth, and what are the cultural and peripheral issues that can be legitimately be sidelined in order to be all things to all men?

Good question. And of course this assumes that we should even be trying to have a broad appeal. Isn’t the road narrow? That is an entirely different topic.