Preteens & the Stickiness Factor

This is part 2 of going through the book, The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell and relating it to preteen ministry.  Chapter 1 (previous blog covered the Introduction) lays out the 3 Rules of Epidemics.  It basically outlines the major concepts of the book and answers the question: Why is it that some ideas or behaviors or products start epidemics and others don’t?  And what can we do to deliberately start and control positive epidemics of our own?  Great questions to ask.  The 3 Rules of Epidemics will take me three blog posts to get through.  Let’s take a look at one right now: The Stickiness Factor.

The Stickiness Factor says that your message should make an impact.  Maxwell suggests that a message is most powerful when you can’t get it out of your head.  It sticks in your memory.  There are specific ways to make contagious messages stick and simple changes in your presentation and approach make a big difference in how much of an impact it makes.  Most of us get this concept in the world of marketing.  But what about in preteen ministry?

We have a life changing message to communicate.  The way we communicate it should STICK.  Maxwell does take the God Factor out of the equation.  The Holy Spirit helps a message STICK no matter how good or bad the presentation.  But we can’t ignore the Stickiness Factor.  The Stickiness Factor means that we need to be culturally relevant and creative in our approach to communicating to preteens.  There has been a lot said about this topic in the Christian world, so I won’t really elaborate.  Read Patrick Snow’s (Director of SuperStart) thoughts on being culturally relevant to preteens.  We need to always be creative and look for new ways and approaches to communicate effectively.  What is relevant to preteens last year might not be this year. Preteen culture is constantly changing.  We need to get out of our typical format of structuring a service and change it up often.  Trying new approaches is not a one time event.  It should be something we do often.  Once finding successful methods, instead of doing them to death, we should brainstorm ways to capitalize on them.  How can we make them stickier?  How can we tweak them a little?  What entirely new path of communication will it lead us on?

The epidemic we have a passion to see spread is preteens experiencing a life changing relationship  with Jesus.  What better message to spread.  We want the preteens in our group to catch and spread a relationship and the messages of Jesus.  I think we limit our effectiveness when we ignore the Stickiness Factor.

Grapple with these two questions this week: How can I make this message STICK?  What new creative elements will I attempt this month?