As a newly graduated seminarian, it is difficult to try and communicate something that my fellow ministers and pastors have not already said. Won’t it get boring to hear from someone inexperienced and with whom you’re already familiar? Whether it is devotion writing or sermon writing or one-on-one fellowship, I’m finding that a factor that can change how we communicate the same things lies in how well we know the people with whom we are communicating. This month, I will be preaching the same passage three times to three different congregations, but it feels like I will be writing three different sermons. Although the work to study God’s word may be the same, a major portion of my prep time is spent reflecting on the “genes” of each congregation, or even visiting them to get to know them. We are one church, but what we each need to hear in order to experience the Word of God may vary.

This is true not only for pastors and ministers. One of the most common forms of specified communication that we experience comes from the websites we visit and the dreaded ads that we train ourselves to ignore. Corporations track our habits and preferences, the websites we visit, and listen in on our conversations when we don’t even know it. Eventually, we start seeing advertisements for things they think we would like to consume: products, games, or services. If the timing is right, when we are feeling needy for the right thing at just the right time, at the peak of our curiosity, we will click on the advertisement and validate the corporations’ work. Imagine how easy it is to switch off to an ad completely irrelevant to you.

This is not to say that we should tell a person everything they want to hear in order to attract them to Jesus. We are not salesmen, and Jesus and Christianity are not products. Our work is to befriend, know, and love the people around us so that at the right time, when they have the right need, we are in the position to redirect them to God’s truth. Let us have a dynamic relationship with God so that we can respond to the world’s needs with variety!