c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) “Think globally, drink locally.” At Seattle-based Hales Ales Brewery and Pub, that’s the spin on a 1960s phrase birthed back in the days when E.F. Schumacher wrote, “Small is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered.”

In an era of economic globalization, media conglomerates and mass distribution, the urge towards local has a sentimental appeal, but is at odds with prevailing trends.

Those thoughts crossed my mind as I pondered Al Gore’s “Live Earth” mega concerts while throwing away cassette tapes from my 1990s nationally syndicated talk show.

Gore declared Live Earth “the largest global entertainment event in all of history” as the “biggest names” in show biz took the stage to tell their fans that, in the words of actress Rachel Weisz, “every tiny, tiny, tiny little thing adds up to something big.”

Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times asked a reasonable question of the event itself: “If less is more, then why is biggest better?”

It’s a question religious leaders should ask. Since the 1960s, Christian luminaries _ and especially evangelicals _ have increasingly adopted marketing principles to “grow bigger churches.”

They harnessed media to reach bigger audiences. Pastors were urged to abandon the “shepherd/sheep metaphor” to become leaders, entrepreneurs and managers, their performance measured not by the health of their flock but by its size.

Every fiber in the evangelical movement’s bones screams out that bigger is better. With spiritual vitality based on market share, evangelicals have been succeeding; more and bigger churches, best-selling books and CDs, a vast distribution network of media outlets.

Which brings me to the cassette tapes of my nationally syndicated talk show and the dumpster.

There are two reasons I no longer do a daily talk show.

First, I grew weary of the dumbing down of media content. Back in the 1990s each day, Monday through Friday, my yammerings and those of my guests and callers were faithfully recorded onto cassette tapes. Last week I decided to sort through the tapes and keep only the ones worth saving _ a small percentage made the cut.

There were a few high points-discussions about ideas that matter with people who had something to say, but in retrospect, illuminating discourse seemed slimly sandwiched between ample servings of trivialities, misguided opinions and earnest discussions of daily, faddish provocations and preoccupations. It was much ado about nothing that garnered a large audience.

Second, I grew weary of the impersonal, disembodied nature of talk radio. A few hundred thousand people listened to my show and in 10 years I had personal, face-to-face significant conversations with, at most, maybe 50 of those listeners. I was as personally connected and accountable to my listeners as Madonna is to her stadium audience.

A few years ago, David McFadzean, a friend and co-creator of the TV show “Home Improvement,” made a comment that really stuck with me. He said something to the effect that the electronic media is severely limited in its ability to bring about personal transformation. “Transformation,” he said, “happens local, in grassroots community; it happens in local churches.”

Pastor and writer Eugene Peterson decided early on never to pastor a church composed of more people than he could remember by name. He figured William Faulkner only knew two or three miles of Mississippi, and if he concentrated on a small patch, he might produce some significant work, too.

Many believe that in its quest for bigness, American Christianity has become 3,000 miles wide and two inches deep; we know how to grow big churches but we have forgotten how to grow healthy Christians.

Whether in church or on the radio, whether the message is the gospel or the environment, our content is delivered by disembodied communicators who dumb it down because it appeals to the masses. Bigger is better.

There are signs of hope. Live Earth did not attract the massive live or television audiences it expected, and the younger generation is fleeing the large, impersonal, packaged and marketed churches.

Many of us have decided that small is beautiful, and that local and personal allows us to behave as if people mattered.

(Dick Staub is the author of “The Culturally Savvy Christian” and the host of The Kindlings Muse (http://www.thekindlings.com). His blog can be read at http://www.dickstaub.com)

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