For Christians, church life is a hive of activity and the centre of the week. Unfortunately many people in our suburbs don't even know that the church exists or what it does.

How are we going to address this invisibility? I have made a few suggestions in earlier blogs, and today I want to suggest another. 

'Cocooning'

One of the cultural phenomena that arose late last century was 'cocooning'.

The world is big and scary and constantly changing so an individual finds it hard to understand or control it. The response is that people withdraw, and cocoon themselves in their own small, manageable, part of the world.

Evidence of cocooning in an extreme form is seen in the once great American social activity of bowling. The culture of bowling is changing so that many people now bowl alone. For some the cocoon is the home, for others the small group they are part of like school community, and for others the suburb. 

One of the consequences is that a person is only interested in their life and their selected relationships. Interest in things outside my immediate sphere only matter if it is relevant to my current situation, or it could affect me in the future. 

What will people pay attention to?

In terms of what interests a culture that cocoons itself, our interests narrow down to:

    "¢ what is happening to the celebrities (because this is painless for me)

    "¢ conflict situations (where I don't need to put much care into thinking about things because the issues are black and white and simplistic)

    "¢ tabloid journalism

Exploiting the tabloids

Tabloid journalism has been given an unnecessarily bad name. The main feature of the tabloid style is the explaining of ideas by personalising them. So in tabloid communication; a story doesn't exist if it doesn't have a person and a story doesn't exist if it doesn't have a picture.

In our cocooned world there has been a significant increase in readership of local newspapers and a corresponding decrease in the readership of our major dailies. This is understandable as our horizons of interest diminish. Local newspapers are desperate for local content. 

Why don't we take photos and submit articles, from an individual's perspective, to local newspapers?

That will tell the local community that our churches are an active part of the community? I am told by people in local newspapers that if churches produce regular, high quality material it usually gets published because the editors trust that the content is interesting. 

I noticed a church in our local area does this. They write about their Christmas and Easter festivities, their holiday clubs, their outdoor and indoor community events. I feel as though they are a significant part of the community. 

This is a free and powerful way to be known.