Lesson one: Language
A little while ago Kouya sent me a link to another blog post on church signs. The blogger (John, I think) was pointing out how ineffectual some church signs can be and highlighted some of his favourite bad examples…
Sign one
BE AN ORGAN DONOR… GIVE YOUR HEART TO JESUS.
Sign two
CH_ _ CH – WHAT’S MISSING? U R
Whereas John’s argument is that these signs are just untrue, I would suggest that these signs are unintelligible… in other words, most people just wouldn’t understand them.
Assume that you want to send a message to someone. What you do is put that message into a code that the other person has to read and translate. Mostly we use a language, either written or spoken, to send messages but we can also use images, colours or sounds to put our message together. That message is then sent to the reader who translates the message into their own language.
This is where the first problem lies.
If the reader’s terms of reference (culture, identity, knowledge) are different to that of the sender then there’s a chance that they will misunderstand the message and be confused, or ignore, what you are trying to say.
Sign one
BE AN ORGAN DONOR… GIVE YOUR HEART TO JESUS.
To someone who has never sat in a church this sounds pretty weird. You give your heart to the one you love for Valentine’s day, not to some bloke who died a few thousand years ago. That’s if people even know who Jesus is today. At best, this message is only going to have relevance to people who are ‘dechurched’, in other words they have some kind of Christian heritage or understanding. With the ‘organ donor’ reference it gets even more confusing.
Lesson for today: If you are going to send a message, use a language that the recipient is going to understand.