CONCERNING POPULARITY AND IMPACT



Recently, I attended a ministers' conference that had an enthralling list of guest ministers I had never heard of before. A lot in the conference stood out for me, one of whom is a music minister, who also was unknown to me then. I simply joined her class because it had to do with a passion of mine: 'Worship'.

As my culture, I searched out people on social media to get to know them better. By their post, ye shall know them, lol! On perusing through her timeline/feed, I saw that she wasn't particularly having an engaging page in comparison to what I saw in reality. Her passion got me so glued to the topic of worship that I looked forward to her session each time. I dare say that one's social media page isn't enough to capture all that a person stands for or reflects.

It will be pertinent to state here that, truly, ' if you know, you know!'

Those who've been under her ministration know; those who've come in contact with her know they've met with something. She wasn't one to be sidetracked or put to the sideline, her energy level portrayed it, her charisma, her passion most importantly.

I've said all these to say, your impact cannot be measured accurately by your popularity. My popularity, your popularity, the degree to which we're known is not what tells of our impact. Even silly things trend these days. Even people who're 'contentless' make it to the news somehow. I once heard someone say, in order to begin thinking right, we should ask ourselves relevant questions.

Questions like: 'to those who know me, who am I?', 'do I drain or add value?', am I being useful or just one in the numbers? 'what does my absence or presence in a place connote?'

Suffice it to say that the most popular isn't always the most positively impactful. The level of engagement on your social media isn't particularly a determinant to how you're really doing in reality. One's ability to pull a crowd isn't equivalent to one's ability to nurture the crowd.

PS: Popularity in the absence of tangible, profitable impact is tactless.

Your favourite writer,

Taiwo Eganubi