Prediction: This is in the future of the church.
Right now, hundreds (thousands?) of churches are experimenting with video venues. Mostly, this is "live" music and a taped message (although there is at least one congregation I know of that is doing EVERYTHING with video.) Most of the time, each campus has a campus pastor who provides "presence" and coordinates ministry and connection.
Now, certainly churches are not the only ones doing this. Schools, colleges and business have done teaching over compressed video, satellite, etc for years. When you have a good teacher, I think people would rather listen to them over video, than a bad teacher live. And, as a teacher (and someone who loves teaching/preaching) I understand the idea behind this.
But as a theologian, I have some questions.
What does this say about our theology of incarnation?
If the "Word became flesh"... what happens when there is no "flesh."
What if Marshall McLuhan was right and the medium IS the message (or at least a large part of it.)
Is there something lost when the messenger isn't "live?"
I wrestle with this. Wrestle with it with me.
BONUS THOUGHT: Not doing video venues would keep people like me from saying stuff like this and having it end up on utube for people like me to make fun of...
[NOTE: the video caused one of my loyal readers to have problems and browser crashes... and she is way more important than this video.... so I dumped it.]
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
mmm reminds me of the movie summer school...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094072/
and
http://youtube.com/watch?v=h5or-IWaqTc&feature=related
if anyone remembers, there is a scene where the classroom has a tape recorder for one of the students. each cut shows more recorders so that eventually even the teacher is a reel-reel machine.
I can see it now; Central has a macbook pro playing a paul video to a room full of macs (with one pc, mbob's) recording/streaming to places all over athens.... hehehehe
truely the concept seems very disconnecting. if i wanted to see a video preacher i would stay home and watch some of the goofballs on sunday morning TV. i would be very sad to see the church move in that direction, just to reiterate "the word became flesh" not streaming bits.
I always wonder, is the Spirit in this? If 1000 people are watching the same thing from different tvs at different times, are we gathered together in the name of Christ? I have many, many other questions as well, but that one's at the top of the list.
I agree with the above.
As to the video, yeah, she said it in a really silly way but I understand what she means. Just because someone is really good at delivering social justice doesn't mean that their universalism is less wrong.
just to clarify, that's not what she was saying but the logic is the same.
i am the awesome!
now, re: the original entry. when you receive noteworthy information from people, how do you prefer to receive it? text? instant messaging? email? phone? video chat? or in person?
does the weight of the message change depending upon the medium through which you obtain it?
my answer is yes. anyone else?
Post a Comment