Putting it down on paper.

Late last spring my wife and I started looking for a new church. Now, before you click away, this isn’t a blog about religion or church per se so just hold on a minute.    I won’t get into the reasons why here, but over the course of the summer we’ve visited what seems like dozens of different area churches. After some time, as you might imagine, it got to be a little tough to remember one from the other. So I decided that I’d write an email to a few of the churches that we had liked and a couple to some we hadn’t yet been to in an effort to help clarify their particular stands on some important issues for me and my wife. 

Surprisingly, only half of the churches even responded. The one impression I got over the summer was that the churches (generally speaking) main goal seems to be getting people in the door above all else. Of the half that responded only 1 answered all my questions directly.   The rest gave vauge answers and/or would respond with a message to the effect of; “I would love to sit down with you over coffee and discuss your questions further but email isn’t always the best format for sharing ideas.” What!? Keep in mind I wasn’t looking to share ideas. I was asking pretty straight forward questions about church policy or tradition. These questions could have been easily answered in a 1 sentence line or a short paragraph at worst. I wasn’t asking their stand on the subtle nuances of eschatology or anything. It was all basic positional stuff. Things I could have easily answered had they been asked of me. I was looking for a justification, just an answer.

This is something I’ve begun noticing more and more though. People are seemingly afraid to write down what they believe or feel. Not just in religious matters, but in any walk of life where differences of opinion might creep up. More and more I’ll find myself in a IM or email or forum discussion and be essentially cut off with something along the lines of “I’d rather discuss this face to face”. Why, I wonder? It seems to me that the written form, though it can be tricky to delineate sarcasm, is a much more precise and effective way to make your points and counter points.

In an email I have time to research, ponder and even at times “cool off” before I give my answers. Granted, I’ve been guilty of seeing a statement and furiously pounding out an angry response on the keyboard then hitting the submit button, only to realize 10 minutes later that I was probably “over the top” in my reaction.   Those types of responses can occur no matter what form of communication you use though. In the written form it’s easier to take a moment to fully think out your stance and then better respond when seemingly painted into a corner. So why won’t some people use the written medium?

I can only guess, but I suspect that it’s because a) the person doesn’t know exactly where they stand on an issue, b) they are afraid to discuss a “difficult” topic, or c) they’re embarrassed by the position they’ve taken. The only benefit I can think of to having a face to face is that someone would be able to more easily side track the conversation. This is something that seemingly happens in most face to face discussions I’ve witnessed. You start out discussion apples and before you know it you’re talking 1969 Mustangs.  With the written form it seems much easier to keep on topic. If you start to stray you can simple scroll up or back and find what it was you were after. My suspicion is that some people might be afraid to put what they think in writing. Once it’s down on paper there’s a certain finality to it. Face to face, I can hem haw around, dodge questions and pull out all the usual political maneuvers to avoid saying what it is I really feel.

I really wish some of the church leaders I sent questions to would have had the guts to tell me what it was they believed or where they stood on an issue. Unfortunately though, if you can’t put what you believe down on paper, I’m not convinced you truly know what you believe, or at the very least aren’t convicted by it.