I read an article last week that talked about the method behind the madness of those scam e-mails we get. As the article summary says, “An analysis from Microsoft Research suggests that Nigerian scammers need to sound as ridiculous as possible, so that only the most gullible will reply to them.” Interesting.

Somehow, my mind connected that with a study that Flavil Yeakley did years ago, an in depth study of the Boston Movement done by invitation of Kip McKean and staff. One of the most helpful parts of the study, in my opinion, was a look at what other churches could learn from the methods being used in Boston. Among other things, Yeakley pointed out that the outreach methods used by the Boston group were much more likely to appeal to extroverts, whereas the methods used by traditional churches of Christ tended to appeal to introverts.

Those two unrelated bits of information swirled in my brain and got me thinking about evangelism and preaching. Specifically, I was thinking about how a certain kind of person is reached by a certain kind of teaching and, conversely, different people are attracted to different teaching styles. That’s hardly big news, yet it would explain the gulf that tends to grow up in every movement between “traditionalists” and “progressives.”

Does that make sense? I could throw out some examples that come to my mind, but I’d rather hear yours. Can you think of ways in which this would be true? If it is, then how do we achieve unity in spite of this trend?