Five Fundamentals of Filtering

Friday, February 20th, 2009

Just saw a great update from Walt Mueller over at CPYU. He was discussing the ever changing world of Marketing, pushing the envelope and how that “push” of the envelope affects our response, perception, and ultimately, our ministry. That caused me to think about how we spend our energy in ministry trying to keep up with the change, wanting to know the culture and yet not wanting to be changed by it regarding the message of hope in Christ. I have always felt that it was more biblical and practical to teach students FILTERING skill rather than concepts. Concepts tend to be more abstract that must be applied to each situation. Filtering skills are one step closer where we can apply our developing filters to anything we see, hear or experience. Especially for Middle School students, we need to be as concrete as we can. With this in mind I thought it would be beneficial to share with you the SME filtering questions that I share at Parenting Conferences. These five were adapted from Walt Mueller’s list called The Simple Seven Ad-Filtering Questions.

I call mine: The Five Fundamentals of Filtering.
1. Is someone trying to SELL me something?
2. If I “buy” it, will I also be indirectly purchasing an idea, lifestyle, behavior or world view.?
3. Is there bait, hook or promise that lures me out of my zone of Christian standard?
4. Is the person communicating information or selling “products” to me trustworthy?
5. Does this idea, attitude, lifestyle or behavior reflect Christ?