Data Overload: Is Your Church Guilty of Infobesity?

By
Charles Stone
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In today’s world we’re bombarded with information overload. One author coined this problem infobesity (Pearrow, 2012) to describe this data overload. When we get too much data our thinking brain shuts down to new information. British psychologist Dr. David Lewis coined a term to describe what happens from infobesity as ‘Information Fatigue Syndrome.’ Symptoms include burnout, a compulsion to constantly check email or the web, poor concentration, hostility (Elwart, 2013), and anxiety caused by over stimulating our brain’s emotional centers. Sometimes churches can be guilty of infobesity. Is yours?

In 2012 this amount of information was produced every single minute and it grows each year (Elwart, 2013).

  • 72 hours of video posts
  • 347 blog posts
  • 700,000 Facebook entries
  • 30,000 tweets
  • 2 million e-mails sent
  • 12 million text messages

Unfortunately the church can be guilty of overloading people with information as well. What might indicate that your church is guilty of infobesity? Consider these 5 indicators.

  1. You pack your Sunday bulletin with so many inserts about activities that the inserts get dropped all over the floor after the service.
  2. Your announcements last longer than 3 minutes.
  3. Your announcements include more than 3 items.
  4. At your staff meetings you get dizzy thinking about all the stuff that “needs” to be communicated.
  5. You send out more than one weekly email to church members about church events.

So if you think your church is guilty, what can you do to address it?

  1. Clarify your church’s vision and don’t do stuff that doesn’t reinforce it.
  2. Learn to say no to marginal events and ministries.
  3. Prioritize what’s most important and make sure those priorities get priority communication.
  4. Align all your communication venues (announcements, bulletin, enews, other printed collateral) so that they all reinforce your priorities.
  5. Develop an annual calendar so you can see what events might compete with each other.

How have you dealt with infobesity in your church?

“I just learned how to deal with infobesity in my church.”(tweet this quote by clicking here).

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