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The Tipping PointBy
Malcolm Gladwell Paul Revere’s ride. Hush Puppies. Sesame Street. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Crime in New York City. Believe it or not, they have something in common. Author Malcolm Gladwell explains that each is an example of a “tipping point,” which he defines as the “idea that epidemics can rise or fall in one dramatic moment…when everything can change all at once.”1 The tipping point is when the impossible, the unthought of, suddenly becomes a certainty rather than a remote possibility. Gladwell compares this Tipping Point to a viral epidemic in its spread. An easy read with an intriguing concept, The Tipping Point grabs the attention of the reader by introducing the story of Hush Puppies shoes and how they suddenly became wildly popular just as the company was thinking of phasing them out. What caused this sudden change from having been considered ugly, out-of-fashion shoes to those worn by the “in” crowd? Gladwell says that it all started with a few kids who began wearing them precisely because no one else would. It then spread to two fashion designers of haute couture who used the shoes as just an incidental touch. From this inauspicious start, in the space of two years, these $30 shoes went from being worn by a handful of downtown Manhattan hipsters to being carried by every mall in America. Obviously, Hush Puppies experienced a tipping point. Gladwell explains the Hush Puppy phenomenon and the success of Paul Revere’s ride, a decline in the New York City crime rate, with the popularity of both Sesame Street and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by defining three common “agents of change” which he calls:
An important message is that little causes often have big effects. All of us, of course, would like to know how to bring about this tipping point. Gladwell makes the idea seem simple when he asks, “What happens when two people talk? That is really the basic question here, because that’s the basic context in which all persuasion takes place.”2 An extensive endnote section is evidence that Gladwell did his research, and an index makes the book easy to use. The Tipping Point contains many interesting examples for social behavior. These examples, however, caused me to question whether or not the concepts could be applied to our spiritual lives. And I then realized that there are many biblical events that were Tipping Points. One example is the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2) that began with just a few people. Yet the message spread like wildfire when those few spread the gospel of Christ and the Holy Ghost. So why can’t we today become contagious for Christ? The answer is that we can. We can begin, and take part in, an Apostolic epidemic, an epidemic of true holiness that is felt everywhere. ninetyandnine.com ©
2001, Shirley McDonald Shirley McDonald attends the First Pentecostal Church of Denham Springs, Louisiana, where she hopes to be part of an Apostolic epidemic.
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