What’s the Choir?

If you haven’t heard the phrase “preaching to the choir,” it means talking to people who already agree with what you say and are motivated to act on it.

Think about a choir. It’s composed of people who, more than likely, want to be there, or at least care enough about something else that they’re willing to tolerate participating. There aren’t a lot of choirs full of people who hate it. The choir wouldn’t last long.

It’s often enjoyable to talk to someone who agrees with you. There is no risk of awkward silences, rebuttals, or rebukes. You can just keep going and feed off each other’s agreement.

We see this all the time in Catholic communications (a lot of secular communications, too).

Who’s Preaching to the Choir?

The Church, institutionally—and here, I mean dioceses, parishes, and ministries—has excelled at affirming the choir, thanking the choir, but not growing the choir. If the Church posts about an event, a prayer, a teaching, etc., the people who pay attention are the ones who care most. That’s the choir.

Let’s be clear, most Catholics aren’t in the choir. This is evidenced by collapsing Mass attendance, church involvement, financial support, and broadly living by the Gospel in daily life. They don’t care about events or prayer or teaching. It’s not relevant. They’ve made up their minds about what they think the Church is, or they just don’t think about it at all.

Yet the Church, at an institutional level, has persisted in preaching to the choir. To the point that the digital presence of the Church, beginning with websites, emails, and finally social media, has largely ignored those who aren’t already committed.

The story is a bit different offline. Evangelization continues through personal relationships, ministries, and public displays of faith. My concern is with digital, where, for good or ill, millions of hours are spent every day.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with preaching to the choir. The choir needs motivation, strength, and resilience, too. The problem is when you only address the choir and avoid the larger world.

Who’s Preaching to Everyone Else?

Soon after the dawn of the digital age, many Catholics, already alert to the problem of a secularizing world and the absence of answers and creativity from the institutional Church in America, picked up the gauntlet.

Over the last twenty years, there has been an explosion of Catholic lay, religious, and ordained individual activity online, from blogs to podcasts to stores and ministries. With near singular purpose, this massive amount of content sought to address pain and drama within and outside of the Church, address questions, go behind the scenes, unpack history, explore traditions, devotions, treasures, architecture, shrines, apparitions, rites, teachings, arguments, trends, product lines, music, art, dating, food, and so much more.

Where the institutional Church was silent, Catholics boldly marched into the secular world with creative and courageous content that met people where they were.

What Kind of Content Is the “Non-Choir” Interested In?

When you preach to the choir, you don’t have to worry about backlash. You can talk about events and donations and keep messaging general since the audience brings years of background and a wealth of positive emotions and thoughts.

The rest of the world is a mixed bag of positive and negative and overwhelmingly lacks any connection to God, the Church, the bishop, and the pastor. It doesn’t have the backstory.

So, what are they interested in if you get their attention?

It’s not an ordination, death, birthday, ministry fair, festival, or retreat in the hall.

It’s gay marriage, foreign wars, drinking problems, abortion, loss of employment, the presence of God in natural disasters, broken hearts, torn relationships, dwindling prospects, politics, and hypocrisy.

In addition, people are comfortable without belief. They’re scared of change or believing in what’s unpopular. They don’t want to rock boats in their inner circles or make new commitments when life is already hard. There are other religions and easier ways to live. They don’t have time, or they don’t see the value or purpose even if they aren’t anti-Catholic. 

There is quite a lot standing in front of most Catholics—not to mention the noise of celebrities, hobbies, sports, and news on the internet.

It’s Time to Take Risks

Let me be clear, a “choir” will always be necessary.

However, like the saints before us who hiked, sailed, and drove all over the world to reach souls, the institutional Church (dioceses, parishes, ministries, organizations) must shake off what’s safe and cozy. Without isolating the choir, it must branch out to address the culture at large.

This means posting controversial, uncomfortable, personal, and compelling content on platforms where people gather and in ways that earn attention. The Church cannot talk past or over the audience online, but must address specific heartaches and conundrums.

It must listen and teach. It must compete with the sharpest and brightest personalities and brands in the world, who spend billions of dollars and hours every day figuring out how to make themselves the center of the audience’s life.

The Church will always be counter-cultural. But the Church can’t present herself as an option on a menu of great choices. Jesus is the only giver of everlasting happiness, and the Church is the best way to know Jesus.

If the Church tells the story of reaching perfect joy to modern audiences in the ways I’ve described, things will change.

Imitate Christ

Who was the best marketer ever?

Christ, of course. He is the ultimate teacher, business builder, evangelizer, spokesman, and living witness to what he’s offering. 

And what was his “content?” Miracles. Answers to questions. Analogies people could understand. Examples from their own lives. He spoke to the heart. Whether financial, psychological, societal, marital, no matter the problem people faced on that day, Christ’s “content,” what we call the Gospel, was tailored to it.

The Church must do likewise. In real life and online.

If we go out into the world and create amazing content, the choir will grow. But the Church is not inward online; she is outward. Her face is before the world, beckoning it to find rest in what she offers, which is Christ himself.