A televised event doesn’t communicate anything about a person’s character. It can only affirm or deny talent and attractiveness, I think that the example is weak and does not necessarily carry that connotation; it overstates things. However, I do tend to think that the writer is right with this.
the extensive financial outlay required to pull off a video-venue service communicates to the congregation that only a preacher with a golden tongue has authority to preach the gospel. It conveys the unspoken belief that no one in the satellite congregation has the authority to speak to their context because preaching requires unique talents that only a few actually possess. Like the wizard in The Wizard of Oz, only the larger-than-life giants, painted by pixelated light, and hovering above the congregation, possess these elusive talents. The medium itself nurtures an elite priestly class in which the preacher is set apart from the people. With video venues, we can say goodbye to the priesthood of all believers and hello to the papacy of celebrity.
However, we do need to be careful at this point: the problem I see here is that a particular approach to worship has been hypered by the medium. As McLuhan was trying to say with 'the medium is the message', technology extends our abilities: it amplifies certain aspects of our abilities. In this case it amplifies the ability to project ones voice and image to a greater number of people at once. This does tend to have the effect of heightening 'celebrity', in effect. But it doesn't damn the use of video per se; just problematises that kind of use, and I agree that magnifying the office of preacher like that is perhaps not a good strategy and amplifies some of the worst tendencies of modernist-framed church culture. It's also a rather unimaginitive use of the possibilities: simply to do what we did before only bigger and more -dare I say?- oppressive.
But what if we used video imput more ambiently? Or to bring to bear things that would otherwise be hard to convey [a chat with a mission partner in Ethiopia, or a demonstration of just how things are in the downtown area the church is proposing to do some justice and social care work in], or to simply use graphic effects to expand the appreciation of liturgy and song or to help people remember better what is said. But talking heads? Give us a break. Let's learn from the use of video in clubs, in concerts and so forth. Let's also think about how it can empower ordinary Christians.
On a slightly different tack, I think that perhaps what the writer is reacting against is out of a feeling that not having the physical presence of a preacher is somehow not right in worship. I actually think that that instinct, which I share is about the same kind of difficulty with having communion over the airwaves; somehow the relationality that is meant to be inherant in worship is being attenuated so much that God's creation of community is being comupromised. Or am I being a bit too precious and reactionary?
Leadership Blog: Out of Ur: Video Venues and the Papacy of Celebrity: Why changing the methods always changes the message:
Filed in: media, message, Christian, worship, preaching
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