You Found Me by Richardson Rick

Author:Richardson, Rick [Richardson, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2019-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

The Impact of Imitation

As demonstrated in the research and in Jake’s story, imitation is the key way people become more effective and engaged witnesses to what God has done in their lives. People need to see others with whom they can identify and then watch them live it out or hear stories that they can reproduce. Gradually, as they take steps to imitate the example put before them, they will begin to experience the power of practicing witness in their own lives. Pretty soon, you won’t be able stop them. They will have caught the vision and are going to give it to others. Multiplication has begun.

This principle of imitation, reflected in our research, is also based on the science of mimetics. 1 Mimetics means imitative, as in mimicking others. 2 It is the science of how words, phrases, and behaviors get passed from one person to another or one group to another. Think about phrases or behaviors and how they spread. Those phrases, words, or actions we want to see spread to others are called memes in the science of mimetics. Like genes that pass on physical characteristics, memes pass on ideas and actions. 3

Take a simple meme such as “Where’s the beef?” a famous phrase on Wendy’s commercials years ago. 4 What made it so memorable and spread it so widely? The commercial featured an unforgettable image of a tiny ninety-year-old woman driving away from a fast-food restaurant that had served up a little dollop of beef on a big bun. She was outraged from paying so much money for no beef, which left her asking, “Where’s the beef?” The succinct phrase “Where’s the beef?” combined with the actions and emotions reflected in the commercial lodged these words in the memories of watchers and led to the action of trying out Wendy’s, as well as to the retelling of the commercial and phrase all across the culture. 5 This phrase went viral long before we even had the internet to spread things quickly and cheaply. When we combine word, action, emotion, and image, creating a story, and they all line up and reinforce one another, we lodge memories in the minds of the people who watch and listen, and those people act on the memory and retell it to others.

Many less trivial examples abound.

Martin Luther King Jr. created an enduring meme with his “I Have a Dream . . .” speech. His dream of an America where people are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character helped change thinking and behavior around what it means to be a good human being and a moral human community in our country. The words about his dream, the actions he had done to make it a reality, the image he portrayed as an unbroken and unbowed and immensely dignified black man in America, even the timbre of his voice, all combined to tell a story of the promise of the defeat of segregation and racism in America, and that dream still resonates and rings true years later.

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