Love for Media? Love for People?

I love creating media that moves people emotionally, and challenges them spiritually. I love creating media that makes people ask the most difficult questions of life. And I love creating media that offers the true life of Christ.

My problem is this: It’s so easy to forget that good media is simply a tool – that it’s spiritually neutral. There is no such thing as “Christian media” – there’s only the message we infuse into that media. That message will make it Christian, or not. Our media is impotent if not created with the target of people in its scope.

Truth is, I can find myself aiming at all sorts of alternative targets with the media I create at Floodgate. I aim at making money for our company. I aim at impressing people with talent (and secretly hoping that I’m validated in some way by it). I aim at a spot in the top ten of WorshipHouse or Sermonspice.

Crap.

Jesus came to save. He came to save people. He used illustrations from the Palestine countryside and the Jewish landscape to communicate to people. Those illustrations were mostly about the Kingdom of God. The media Christ used was always a tool for understanding, or for further confusion or confrontation (he wasn’t actually too concerned if the religious elite didn’t understand or embrace him). People were his endgame, and media was the means.

Do we love our media more than the people we serve with it?

I gotta be ready to answer that question when I walk into the office tomorrow morning.