Here is a article by COLLIDE MAGAZINE. This has been a great resouce site for me in media ministry. This article gives us some insite into why we use media in the church and how it can be a positive experience.
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Over COLLIDE’s lifespan, we’ve dedicated thousands and thousands of words to writing about media, technology, and the Church. Why? Because we believe God uses us and our tools to accomplish His good work, and so we talk about it. But even though you probably agree with us when we declare that media matters, we thought our final issue would be a good opportunity to state our case, as clearly and thoroughly as we can, for the value of media and technology in the mission of the Church. Perhaps this exploration will expand or inform the way you see media and technology in your ministry context, or perhaps it will help you better articulate why media matters to the people you serve and serve with. Either way, this should be fun.
Communication
As pastor and author Shane Hipps has often said, “Christianity is a communication event.” The phrasing might seem strange at first, and you may even disagree. “No,” you might say, “Christianity is all about a relationship.” But what if you’re both right? After all, what is a relationship? At its most basic level, a relationship is a series of reveal-respond communication events. Depending on the context and health of these reveal-respond exchanges, emotions and associations such as trust, fear, love, loathing, intimacy, and resentment are fostered. And so Christianity in its best and purest form is about a relationship (or a series of relationships—individual to God and individual to others), and the substance of a relationship is communication. Christianity is a communication event, and therefore, as we practice Christianity we practice communication.
Communication is about imparting information from one to another—a spouse communicates what he’s feeling, a teacher communicates what she thinks and knows, and a leader communicates the organization’s vision and next steps. In the Bible, we see God communicating with humanity about his character, the world he created, our tendencies as fallen bearers of his image, how we can best live this life, and how we can best relate to him. Obviously, these truths and principles belong at the heart of what we believe and practice. But beyond the theological and doctrinal implications of these communicated messages, what has always captivated us at COLLIDE is how these messages have been communicated across centuries, contexts, and media. A survey of the biblical narrative, church history, and the present-day Church reveals God’s use of art, creativity, metaphor, surprise, and technology in a myriad of outlets.
We all know that Adam and Eve walked with God in the Garden. Then came the Fall, and everything changed—direct, face-to-face communication between God and humans was taken off the table. Exodus 33 describes the unique relationship between Moses and God, and although the two met and conversed in a tent, God represented himself with a Pillar of Cloud (verse 10). Later in the chapter, Moses asks to see God’s full glory, and The Message articulates God’s response as follows: “I will make my Goodness pass right in front of you; I’ll call out the name, God, right before you ... But you may not see my face. No one can see me and live.”
In this conversation and God’s counterproposal to Moses, we clearly see the reveal-respond dynamic at work. But we also see the effect of the Fall on our communication with God—if he reveals his face, we respond by dying. In this effect we find a framework for our communication with our Creator: Because of sin, communication between God and humanity is in some ways limited by our fallen state. And yet the unseen God still has much communicating to do as an overflow of his desire for communion with us, and thus, the burning bush.
The burning bush is a fitting representation of God’s communication in the Bible. The burning bush is mysterious, awe-inspiring, and wholly unexpected, and in it God gives Moses something to look at as God speaks. The burning bush combines the words and presence of Almighty God with an odd, unnatural phenomenon—a shrubbery ablaze but not consumed. That’s a communication event.
Of course, the inventive communication channels don’t end there. In Numbers 22 we find the story of Balaam, a man who has conversations with God regarding some Moabites. When Balaam turns abusive toward his donkey, God enabled the donkey to talk, revealed an angel to Balaam, and then commissioned Balaam to be his messenger to the Moabite nobles. In a similarly fascinating story told in Daniel 5, God uses a disembodied hand and the translation skills of the Spirit-filled Daniel to send a message to King Belshazzar. Clearly, God isn’t concerned with our expectations regarding communication, nor is he married to a specific medium or messenger. His communication with us is the embodiment of multimedia.
Metaphor in the Bible
Metaphor is a powerful but somewhat indirect communication tool. Metaphors seek to impart information, but comparison is their means of illumination. For instance, in Genesis 15 God could’ve told Abram that his descendants would number in the millions or billions. Instead, God says, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them. So shall your offspring be.” Instead of dealing in numbers and statistics, God uses metaphor to communicate the enormity of his promise to Abram.
In Jeremiah 18, God has a message to speak to Jeremiah. But first, God wants Jeremiah to see something. God directs Jeremiah to the potter’s house, where the potter was at work reshaping a lump of clay. Then God gives Jeremiah a message: “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel.” Again, God shows and speaks a metaphor in order to reveal his message to humanity. And then we come to Hosea.
Rather than just observe a metaphor such as stars in the sky or clay in the potter’s hands, God instructed Hosea to live out a metaphor. “Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her,” God commanded, “for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the LORD.”
Of course, I could go on, but suffice it to say that creative, representative communication is one of God’s chosen methods. And that should be encouraging to us as leaders, communicators, storytellers, designers, and artists. Much of what we do through media and technology is metaphor—artistic expressions that attempt to illuminate the faith through comparisons befitting our context. In the end, it’s not about showing off or the credibility that comes from being perceived as outside-the-box thinkers. What we do is about reaching people—lost or found, churched or unchurched—with the message God gives us to share. Whether you use an anecdote, a short film, a series of monologues, a film clip, or a well-designed graphic, you’re faithfully serving the Church and following in the footsteps of your Creator. We’re called to help people see that which is unseen with our art, our messages, our work, and our lives. There’s no question about it—that matters.
Art in the Bible
In Exodus 31, God tells Moses about an artist named Bezalel:
“See, I have chosen Bezalel ... and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge, and with all kinds of skills—to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver, and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of crafts.”
For a lot of creative people in the Church, this passage is a source of encouragement and validation. The God of the Universe, the Creator, endows people with artistic skills and commissions them to work for him.
While Bezalel is an obscure biblical figure, David is one of the most prominent characters in the Old Testament. David is often celebrated as a warrior and a king, and the stories of his exploits fill many pages in our Bibles. But David was also a talented musician who, in addition to slinging stones at giants, could play the lyre so well that he brought relief to the tormented King Saul. Beyond his lyre chops, it appears David was also gifted with a pen. Seventy-three psalms are attributed to David, and we’re well acquainted with the important liturgical role of his art. The Psalms are a prime example of artful communication—the reveal-respond dynamic leaps off every page as poems of different genres explore the character of God, his relationship with humanity, and the spectrum of emotions that accompany faith and the human experience. This art has been an integral part of our worship for centuries. Again it seems that God both gives and celebrates art as it serves his purposes.
Media and Technology in Church History
When David faced the aforementioned giant, he had to make some technological decisions. Saul dressed the young shepherd in his tunic, armor, and helmet (presumably helpful technology for the task at hand) but David knew they would hinder rather than help him. But his sling—a long-range weapon—was an ideal technological implement for bringing down a belligerent Philistine, and we all know how that turned out. And while it might be odd to consider David transporting Goliath’s head to Jerusalem as communication through media, I imagine that it sent a strong message to the citizens there.
Throughout the course of church history, people have been charged with making similar decisions. What methods and media can best communicate the message? When the masses were mostly illiterate, the Church relied on media such as paintings, tapestries, sculptures, songs, stained glass, architecture, sermons, common prayers, and liturgically-intensive services to impart spiritual truths. The apparent prevalence of visuals and ritual has been easy to judge for modern evangelicals, but we must remember that it wasn’t an option to distribute personal Bible study and devotional materials in a pre-modern context.
Scribes worked laboriously to make copies of the Bible by hand, and these copies were distributed to church leaders for their edification. But it was the work of these leaders to translate the words on the page into something the culture at large could engage and, hopefully, internalize. Frescoes and stained glass represented biblical narratives, and even the size and shape of the old cathedrals were meant to communicate facets of the unseen God.
When history, culture, and church politics collided in what would become known as the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther and other reformers began pushing revolutionary ideas about Scripture, grace, and personal faith. But while we’re generally familiar with the important people, places, and theses of the Reformation, some of us neglect to mention the technology that enabled the movement. The printing press put pages of Reformation literature into the hands of the growing number of literate Europeans. A new, more democratic means of communicating with the people emerged, and the Church that needed reforming no longer had a monopoly on the transmission of spiritual ideas. God sparked a monumental movement in his body, and technology was among the kindling factors.
Media and Technology in the 21st-Century Church
If you’re paying attention, you know media and technology are changing both our culture and the Church at a breakneck pace. In culture, our communication habits and consumption habits have shifted dramatically in the last decade or two—our devices are always on, we’re constantly connected, and we’re frequently downloading or uploading content. In many ways, we’re increasingly fragmented, addicted, and inundated.
In the western Church, our services are changing, our music is changing, our sermons are changing, and our venues are changing. We convene in large auditoriums, renovated strip centers, middle-class living rooms, and online water coolers. Our services are getting shorter, and our alt-indie-rock-pop-house-gospel-folk worship music is getting louder. Our sermons are growing more accessible, topical, thematic, story-driven, and media-supported. We brand sermon series, embed video testimonies on our websites, create short films designed to put a lump in your throat, and get creative with our fonts when we project worship lyrics. Yes, things are changing.
By and large, the changes in church practices described above come from pure motives—to honor God, to express who he is and what he has done for us, and to reach people who don’t know him. Media and technology are powerful tools toward those ends, and because those ends represent much of what the Church is called to be and do, media and technology matter. Even better, as I hope I’ve articulated above, media and technology have always mattered.
We communicate with both God and culture. We participate in the dance of revelation and response. We use art and metaphor to point to him. So although no one has ever seen God (1 John 4:12), we are his individual and collective workmanship, created in Christ to do good works (Ephesians 2:10). We are the city on the hill, and by our lives, love, and communication, we reveal the Great Architect. It is this great pursuit that gives media and technology their significance, and so we use them carefully, faithfully, skillfully, prayerfully, and passionately.
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