The Medium is the Message

The Messenger is the Medium

One of my mentors was Dr John Piet, OT professor at Western Theological Seminary, Holland, MI in the late 70s and 80s. “The Medium is the Message,” was one of his basic teachings around communication. Of course, this wasn’t his original thought. This came in 1964 from Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian communications guy.

What’s it mean?

Okay, try this. A deep well in the middle of a desert. Sweet water in the bottom of the well. The well is the medium and the water is the message. However, because the well delivers the water, the well and the water and the life they give are one and the same. Otherwise, the well is just a hole in the ground. Make sense?

Dr Piet taught preachers, so he moved into flesh and blood kind of stuff. He’d say, “You are the message. You, Vis!” So if that’s true, if I’m the message, then what exactly is it that I’m saying by being me? Sobering to think that thought out loud.

How about his guy?

What’s the message in Jesus’ life as we know it from the Gospels? And how does his flesh-and-blood message compare to this guy’s?

Or this guy’s?

Or this guy’s?

How about we think out loud about this over the next few days.

This will come up!

And this!

And whatever it is you might be thinking.

An Aside

On October 4, 1987, in Portage, MI, at age 39, I preached a sermon entitled: The Gospel According to Donald Trump. It was not a great sermon, but it was important to preach at the time. The sermon was a response to the September 28 issue of Newsweek magazine which concluded that then 40-year-old Donald Trump “is a symbol of an era.” It went on to say, “For better of worse, in the 1980s it is OK to be fiercely ambitious, staggeringly rich and utterly at ease in bragging about it.”

“There is no one my age who has ever accomplished more,” Donald Trump (Newsweek, September 28, 1987, pages 51-52).

Thanks.