Does our audience need more?

In WORLD’s early days, one of our recurring strategic discussions could be summarized this way: deep or broad?

For a tiny organization publishing a handful of news magazines, most of them for students, the question was unavoidable. Should we broaden our coverage into new subjects and new audiences? Or should we devote our limited resources to covering the same subjects more deeply?

Basic economics demanded a choice. With limited people and limited money, every new initiative came at the expense of something else. Joel Belz understood that as well as anyone. But he also believed God could enlarge our capacity over time. His answer was almost always the same: “Let’s do both!”

He believed that, as God provided and WORLD grew, we could gradually expand our reach while also deepening the quality of our work. Looking back over the past four decades, it’s hard to take issue with his optimism.

But the question hasn’t gone away. We certainly can’t get through our annual budgeting process without asking, and answering, that basic question. For many years, when supporters asked me what we would do with more resources, I have answered, “More. And better.” That’s my paraphrase of Joel’s “Let’s do both!”

As all of us try to navigate an endless stream of news, commentary, videos, podcasts, emails, news­letters, and social media, is more really the answer? Do people really need more? Does our audience need more? Only lately have we begun to wonder whether faithful stewardship means something different than it once did.

I’m certainly not suggesting that Christians pay less attention to the world around them. By no means! The question is not whether we should pay attention, but how. WORLD exists to help readers better understand the place and time in which God has placed us. But we’ve begun to ask whether the way many people now consume information—and the sheer volume of information available—is making it easier, or harder, to understand the world clearly.

I hate to hold myself out as a bad example, but here goes: Before I take my morning shower, I can read a dozen headlines, skim several articles, check social media, and scroll through hundreds of “breaking news” notifications (my own fault—I subscribed to most of them). It doesn’t get better as the day goes on.

By most measures, I ought to be well informed. But I’ve begun to wonder whether I really am. In a given day I can accumulate an enormous amount of information, yet I find it increasingly difficult to think deeply about much of it. I know more, but I’m not sure I understand more.

This is not a new phenomenon, of course. More than 50 years ago, long before the age of smartphones and social media, Nobel laureate Herbert Simon suggested that an abundance of information creates a “poverty of attention.” That concept has morphed into today’s “attention economy” and the idea of “digital overload.” This is not a new or original insight. I’m just experiencing its effects on a less abstract level.

All of this has prompted a new sort of discussion here at WORLD. We’re trying to figure out what we should be doing about it. I’ll be straightforward: We don’t have an answer yet. But we’re beginning to wonder whether it’s still appropriate to start the answer with “More.”

Scripture has long been preparing God’s people for this challenge. It repeatedly calls us to fix our minds on what is true—to meditate, to remember, to consider, to watch carefully, and to be sober-minded. Those are “attention” terms. They remind us that information often accumulates faster than wisdom, and that understanding does not automatically deepen simply because more facts become available. Scripture may not give us an easy answer, but it gives us enduring principles for thinking faithfully about the question.

So Joel was right. As God has blessed WORLD, we’ve been able to do more and do it better. But every generation must ask its own stewardship questions. Ours may no longer be simply “How can we produce more?” It may be “How can we help God’s people understand more deeply?” That is the question we are asking now, and we’ll keep you updated.