Read Schuchardt is asked about Media, Technology, and Religion:
How should Christian leaders – clergy, lay leaders, music ministers, etc. – think about using tech in their ministries?
Very very carefully. My first recommendation is to read Jacques Ellul’s “Effect on Churches” section of Propaganda. My second is to recognize that the church is not competing with Starbucks, the mall, or the movie theater for audiences. I think Henri Nouwen gets it right [in his In the Name of Jesus - ed.] when he says that the leaders of the future will be those who have the courage of being culturally irrelevant, because they will recognize that what the soul in technological society truly craves is the worship of the true and living God, not the temporary two-hour appeasement of the burden of self-consciousness that can be had anywhere else and with higher production values. So recognizing that worship and entertainment are not synonyms, understanding how icons (cultural and religious) work both semiotically and spiritually, knowing that “ecclesia” is the people and not the building, and knowing that value is a function of scarcity (and not repeatability), that is where I would start with teaching clergy how to think about tech use in their ministries. By and large, most people hate church for the same reason they hate meetings run by PowerPoint: if I can get this electronically on my laptop at my own convenience, why am I even here?
The emphasis is mine.
A preacher can almost never be persuaded by rational argument not to use fashionable technology. Hiding the extension cord is only a short-term fix. If the projector disappears or “accidentally” doesn’t work, they’ll just buy a new one. Something like TV B Gone might help in some cases, but often these things are hard-wired. Really I think PowerPoint, once in the church, does not go out except by prayer and fasting.
UPDATE 20 December 2011: Christianity and the Future of the Book, by Alan Jacobs
The Church of Christ has something going for it here. If someone so much as plays a song over the audio system, as some sort of illustration for Communion or a sermon, people get a bit antsy, and you can hear a few elderly folk in the back: “there’s another thing I don’t approve of…”
The biblical basis for not having instruments seems weak (that is, non-existent) to me, but the no-need-to-do-upkeep-on-the-drum-set-or-tune-the-organ part is nice. Plus, it’s not so LOUD.
Of course, we do have power point with song lyrics on it. I wonder if you could find a church without that. Are they even doing it in mass now?
Score one for the Catholic Church: only technology we have is the speaker system, and sometimes the heat.
There’s something to be said for making a decision – no video, no recorded music, acoustic instruments only, whatever – and sticking with it. There’s very little to be said for adopting the latest thing the “successful” mega-church does, or making church hip and relevant to attract “today’s youth.” The protestant mainline has been doing that since 1965, with no result but a steadily older and smaller membership. It doesn’t make church hip and relevant, it just makes it lame. Chasing the trend leaves us always a year out of fashion. We’d do better to be a thousand years out of fashion and happy about it.
I don’t mind if people want to have loud contemporary services; I’ve been to some that were very good. Those we try to put on are not very good. And I’ve been to churches with projection screens that were effectively used and not annoyingly obtrusive. But I do not want a screen in our church. First, putting a big white screen where it’s visible to the congregation means putting it in front of the cross, and that suggests to me a mistaken emphasis. Moreover, I spend plenty of time outside church looking at a screen, so I don’t want to spend Sunday morning the same way. Finally, PowerPoint is devils’ work; it’s stupid, and it makes people stupid.
Schuchardt’s interview linked above, on media, technology, and religion, has several other thought-provoking observations.
I was immediately drawn to our current church in part because there was no screen. Or stage. There was an altar, with a cross behind it.
There is a praise band, but they stand to the side. The church even prints the sheet music in the bulletin, so you can figure out the tune, and the praise band actually follows it. There’s never that spontaneous “one more time and let’s do it a cappella” awkwardness.
There are problems if the order of worship is set in stone. If people chant the same words their ancestors chanted 1500 years ago, without understand what they’re saying or why, it becomes empty ritual. There are also problems if everything is up for grabs every Sunday (or Saturday; or how about Wednesday?) It can degenerate into a cult of personality or a service club, or everyone may just wander away.
There’s a problem if people don’t understand what they’re saying and why even if it’s the first week it’s been said– that’s a teaching problem!