“When you’re explaining, you’re losing.” Politicians of all stripes like to use this simple statement, often attributed to Ronald Reagan, as a guide to commanding attention and winning votes.
A 2024 survey asked over 3,000 new car buyers how much a test-drive entered into their car-buying process. More than half said that the ability to do a test-drive was the top reason they chose to buy from a dealership rather than online. And a whopping 78 percent said that the test drive alone “sold them” on the vehicle they purchased. Test-drives let consumers assess handling, comfort, visibility, ergonomics, ride quality, and other dynamic characteristics for themselves, features that are hard to judge from photos or online reviews. In marketing/behavioral models, this kind of direct “experiential” exposure helps reduce perceived uncertainty and risk.
The test-drive approach is now being used to help people buy houses as well. A Wall Street Journal headline in August put it plainly: House Buyers Are Test-Driving With Sleepovers. Enough with the owners baking bread to provide a nice smell! Enough with all the words on the flyer talking about the house! Folks want to experience the feel of staying in the house. Do the dogs next door bark all night? Can you hear the train two blocks away? Are the neighbors nice? Explaining only goes so far. The tilt seems to be toward experience, even in these digital times. Perhaps especially in these digital times.
It might be worth asking whether this marketing trend applies to churches too. How much does your church board rely on explanation in communicating to the world about the church? If a sleep-over helps with house-buying, and a test-drive helps with car-buying, what kind of experience matters most for church-shoppers? (We assume the answer is “worship,” but do we know that? How do we know that? What else might it be?) And how much do your church board members rely on explanation in communicating with one another?
Early in Luke’s Gospel, John the Baptist sends a couple of his followers to Jesus to ask a crucial question: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to expect someone else?” Significantly, Jesus does not seize this moment to explicate his place in God’s plan. Instead, he tells John’s disciples: “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard – the blind receive their sight; the lame walk; those with a skin disease are cleansed; the deaf hear; the dead are raised; the poor have good news brought to them.”
Asked to summarize his own approach to faith, twentieth-century theologian Paul Tillich could have offered a detailed theological explanation. Instead, memorably, he said:
We want only to communicate to you an experience we have had, that here and there in the world and now and then in ourselves is a New Creation, usually hidden, but sometimes manifest, and certainly manifest in Jesus who is called the Christ.
What do you make of the political axiom, “When you are explaining, you’re losing”? Does that ring true to you?
Can you think of times when you were explaining something, and you saw your audience slipping away?
When is explanation essential?
What kind of experience matters most for church seekers? Can you say why?
As you look over the ministry of your church, where is explanation effective – and where is it not getting traction – with those who are curious about faith?
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