Each of us, no matter where we are from, transcribes information into our thinking into propositions or picturegrams. Then, when we re-tell the event we express it in terms of propositions or in picture language. Some cultures tend more to propositions, others tend toward picturegrams. All cultures agree that a good picture is worth a thousand words. A propositional statement describing a good man: “He pays his bills on time, goes to work everyday and cares for his family.” A picturegram of a good man: “He is like a tree planted by a stream, he gives shade and fruit to the traveler each season, and is green all year long.”
About thirty-five years ago, the American people began to read words less and less to get their information. This was due to the increasing number of screens they were looking at every day, the proliferation of graphic editorial pictures, and multi-full page color comics in the newspaper.
Most kids would tell you they preferred comic books and TV to history school books. There was a change happening in how we received and processed our information; we were becoming a nation that best learned in picturegrams and picture-driven information. As we approached today, a great segment of earth’s population, nearly five billion, get and give importance to their information on the various screens of Facebook that in turn is feeding us back information that they want us to know, be it true or false. Whatever it is, we are driven intellectually by pictures.
At this time in the late 1980s I had a high school age young man that was a fantastic artist. He and I did several teaching picture books together. He was the one that gave me the name that Daniel likes for me, Herbules. I talked him into going to Bible college to learn the Bible to draw with biblical understanding and accuracy. He did not like to talk to people, and would run and hide if even asked to speak to a small group. He would ride the three hundred plus miles to college with Jenifer Pinney (Chavira) without saying a word. He was doing great, and our plans when he graduated were to create a monthly Christian, Bible-based comic book as a youth and adult teaching tool. The Bible college at that time had a controversial president that decided, if he is not going to preach, he doesn’t belong in Bible college. Today, he is a skeptic, and writes and draws a nationally-acclaimed science fiction comic book. I have tried to reconnect with this young man, but have totally failed.
However, most of American people have moved closer and closer to demanding pictorial information, and away from the written word.
In the April 2019 Christianity Today, The Greatest Story Ever Animated (How the Bible project is using video to get people to open the scriptures again) by Paul J. Pastor set my mind to spinning in pictures again.
Working with the two designers, both Bible college and state university with graduate degrees, is Francis Chan, the house church guru, and his Silicon Valley financial connection, are putting the Bible on short teaching videos that has gone wild in reaching a large section of our population that have stopped reading the Bible, and the mainline church is writing them off. Here are the statistical facts that grabbed my attention.
“As of this writing, The Bible Project’s YouTube videos get about 120,000 views per day, a number rising steadily… Their base of over 11,000 monthly supporters is growing by hundreds each month from all around the globe…The Spanish channels alone have 140,000 subscribers and 105 videos…Sixty-four percent of viewers are men, most ages are 18-34, a demographic as being disconnected from faith…The number one comment was, ‘I had no idea the Bible was so’ you fill in the word used by callers, ‘unified…coherent…beautiful…I’ve given up on the Bible, and now it is back in my life, and important to me.’”
The article continued, “What looks like flashy video is underwritten by PhD level research and gifted artistry…Craig Keener, professor of biblical studies at Ashbury Theological Seminary agrees, ‘They are well informed theologically, and show remarkable knowledge of the Canon.’”
Since I am writing this for both The Sunday Epistle for Agape Christian Church, and for Issachar, our political monthly magazine, I want to make two applications.
It is no secret that the church in America is graying. The family is being redefined, no longer do you see in most places two or three generations of a family sitting together in church in a Norman Rockwell-type picture. One church after another is dropping Sunday or Bible School. Religious writers, one after another, are telling us that the Generation Z and Millennial are running from the church en masse. God has brought in plan B. The YouTube videos are reaching 120,000 and growing each day with true-to-the-Bible videos; that is a new viewer every three quarters of a second and growing. With that fact, sixty-four percent are men, and most in the age bracket of 18-34; something important is happening. God is at work, and I believe his Word, that His Word will not return to Him void. I have been very concerned that for the past couple of months as our teen class was forced to meet with our adult Bible school class that they slept through Adult teacher Steve’s class. I could not get much better response in adult evening church. I observed with pictures and words on the screen in the segment of our morning worship, Around the World with Jesus, each teenager and the younger ones, as well as adults, all eyes are on the screen. Teaching has taken a 180-degree turn to pictures and short word sentences. My job is to take the amateur picturegram or picture graph productions that we are doing, and spend more time on them, and get to teaching again.
The second thing I want to address to the church is we need to get ready for a revival to come, hundreds of thousands of young people a day are getting fed the Bible via YouTube videos; THEY WILL COME INTO THE TEACHING ABOUT HOW IMPORTANT THE CHURCH IS AND THEY WILL FEEL MORE AT HOME WITH PICTUREGRAPH TEACHING in a church that has combined picturegraphs with classroom teaching and word sermons. We are at the leading cusp of the movement. Get ready to grow.
To my associates and friends reading Issachar: In the past forty years in teaching adult Christians I found that more and more of them when asked about the editorial page of the local newspaper, they were more knowledgeable about the graphic editorial cartoon than they were with the main written editorials. In other woods, the artist is teaching more and better than the writer. Now, I am not going to throw my keyboard away, but we can learn from all this. One, we must write in a way that the words create learning pictures in the mind of our readers. We should be looking for visuals that help tell our story. We also need to be on the lookout for a good illustrator for our staff. God is not broke, nor has he run out of talent. The makers and shakers of the real world are all readers. But the ninety percent we need to reach and change their mind will be attracted by pictures and graphics. Our job is to reach them and change their mind.
A good picture is still worth a thousand words; do you get the picture? —hp