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EXPERIENCE

Sports Illustrated greeted the newest professional football league with the question, "Will sleazy gimmicks and low-rent football work for the XFL?" Sports talk radio host Jim Rome said the only thing real about the football in the XFL is that it is real bad. Yet the founders of the league are undeterred. The new league isn't about football. The X essentially stands for Xperience. NBC and UPN, the two networks of the XFL, promise to take viewers where they have never been. Cameras and microphones are everywhere, from the offensive huddle to the sidelines to the locker rooms. The league sells the football experience. League owner Vince McMahon calls it the ultimate in reality television. In essence, the games and players don't matter. The league's success hinges on the quality of the experience given viewers. [Sports Illustrated, Feb. 12, 2001]

The XFL is the first truly postmodern sports league. It reinforces the fact that we have moved to an experience economy (Soul Tsunami, pg. 187). The implications for Christian communicators cannot be overemphasized. In modernity we spoke of knowing God, emphasizing the cognitive nature of knowing about Him. In postmodernity we must return to the biblical idea of knowing God, where the term for "know" was used to describe intimate relations between a husband and wife. Our goal is to lead people to a place where they can experience God.

Illustration by Jim L. Wilson

Jeremiah 31:34. "No longer will a man teach his neighbor or a man his brother saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the Lord.

For more information on SoulTsunami, go to http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0310227623/fm082-20