I can’t imagine how difficult these commercials make the holiday season for those who are in a romantic relationship. Commercials like this do more to intensify the idolatry of love and romance more during this time of year than any other. The only other time I think could be worse is Valentines.

I’ve written posts in the past about singleness and have asked others to contribute to the conversation as well. So to encourage those who may be struggling with being single this season, hopefully these posts will give you (or someone you know) a little perspective. Please share these with others who may benefit. The authors will be grateful for your kindness.

Singleness is Like Cramps, or is it?

3 Things That Will Increase The Likelihood of Marital Hardship, by Megan Cornwell

Refrigerators and Singleness

The Wedding Album Affect, by Steve Hayes

Playing by the Rules, by Camille Holland

The Notebook

Ode To My Valentines. Is Christ Enough? by Jonathan Schrodt

And this brings me to the point of this article. The virtual preacher has become the defacto standard for church growth problems. Whenever a church gets too big, the assumption is that the church should go multi-site (as opposed to just planting a new church) with the pastors sermon piped in through a live video feed.

Every time I see a church adopt this methodology I get a little heavy hearted because we have no idea of the message we are sending when we do this. Shane Hipps, who wrote, “The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture” says this about multi-site churches with video venues:

I visited a church recently on the day that it was launching its multi-site service. The most striking feature of the sermon was that his message was directly contradicted by his medium—the video venue.  His message was excellent and told an important truth—ministry is supported by character, not talent. However, the medium of the video venue had a subliminal message of its own. The message of a video-venue sermon is that the authority to preach is derived from talent and celebrity, not character or communal affirmation. A televised event doesn’t communicate anything about a person’s character. It can only affirm or deny talent and attractiveness.

Character is known only through communal affirmation, which requires some personal knowledge of one another. This personal knowledge is impossible for satellite congregations who only see the pastor’s performance.

Not only did the medium itself undermine this particular preacher’s message, but the extensive financial outlay required to pull off a video-venue service also communicated to the congregation that only a preacher with a golden tongue has authority to preach the gospel. . . The medium itself nurtures an elite priestly class in which the preacher is set apart from the people.

Even if this attitude is explicitly denied by the preacher, the very medium reinforces the belief that only talented people with some degree of celebrity can or should preach.

Our intentions with our use of technology may be genuine but I feel we need to take seriously the underlying message that is being sent for that is more important. Multi-site churches may be a good solution, but we need to think twice about virtual preachers for the following reasons:

1. It costs a lot of money to provide a live video feed. Some churches resort to a sermon on video which is cheaper but does not avoid the bigger message that is being communicated.
2. The bigger message is, as Shane Hipps put it, “only a preacher with a golden tongue has the authority to preach the gospel.”
3. We also miss a tremendous opportunity to disciple other men to become better preachers and leaders.
4. It promotes the celebrity preacher.
5. The church community learns to appreciate different styles of preaching.

Ultimately we need to weigh the benefits (what we gain) against the negatives (what we lose). When it comes to choosing whether or not to use video feeds in multi-site churches, in my opinion, the negatives far outweigh the positives.

You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility towards God?- James 4:3-4

The other day I was reading the blog of a friend about thankfulness. I started thinking about how I sometimes don’t feel very thankful for much in my life. If I’m honest, most days I don’t act as a thankful person. But there are days that I am thankful and grateful to God. Sounds good right? It’s not.

The real issue here is not so much that I am thankful to God but rather the motivation behind my thankfulness. Why am I thankful? Most of the time I am thankful because of what he has done for me. I rarely am ever thankful because of who he is. That’s sad because what that means is that in order for me to show my gratitude towards God I have conjure up excitement by focusing more on his gifts rather than on him alone. I am not at all suggesting that we should never be thankful for what God has done for us. I am suggesting that I do think it is a problem when in order for us to get excited and express gratitude towards God we have to first exalt his gifts.  God is only lovely to us when we realize that we are made much of by him.

Psalm 23. It’s a beautiful poem written by David where he uses the metaphor of a shepherd and his sheep to show the unfathomable goodness of God. As many sermons as I’ve heard on Psalm 23, I’ve never heard one that focuses primarily on the Shepherd. Every sermon I have ever heard on this Psalm focuses on the sheep and the great gifts (grace, mercy, loving-kindness) the Shepherd gives to the sheep thus shifting the focus from the Shepherd to the sheep.

I’m not confident that that is what David intends to do. We should be grateful for all the great things that God has done for us but not on the basis of those things alone, but on the basis of who he is. The Psalm exalts the attributes of God and that is what should be celebrated. The attributes of God should be the motive behind our gratitude.

James calls these praying Christians adulterers because they were more interested in the husband’s gifts than they were in him. This is nothing short of idolatry disguised as gratitude. This thanksgiving I have a lot to be thankful for but most of all I am thankful to God simply because he is God.

God help us to magnify your greatness, not on the basis of how it benefits us, but on the pure essence of your character alone!

“We came to agreements years ago that Microsoft would take a neutral stand on the homosexual issue. We agreed to that, and you did that. Steve (Ballmer), you brought that back up and you dropped it. And I would like for you guys to look at the facts and I would like for you to look at the statistics. They do not lie. Since that has been broken, our stock has not increased. Our stock has fallen. Google is kickin’ our natural. Yahoo and others. Amazon. Am I saying that’s God? No, I’m not saying it’s God. I am saying that the fact speaks for itself. And I think we should go back to the original and have a stand that’s neutral to a group that is discriminatory, intolerant, and you are giving them millions and millions of dollars to do this.”

Well, at least he’s not saying it’s God (sarcasm)! At any rate, what I find interesting about this, is that it is difficult to claim that God is punishing someone because of their sin. Job did that and got it wrong. Way wrong.

What’s also interesting is the fact that Google and Apple BOTH support gay rights and their stocks are skyrocketing. So, what gives?

You can read more here and get the audio of his address here.

This is something we cannot ignore. This is why I personally believe every church needs to develop a theology of technology or at minimum develop a standard by which their community will live within a technological society.

As technology becomes more and more integrated into the life of the church there is a trend that I find a bit disturbing and it is commonly found among multi-site churches. I don’t particularly have a problem with multi-site churches as I can see that in certain situations they are needed. My only concern is when these multi-site churches use a live video feed for the sermon.

Reflecting on Mcluhan’s thesis that technology amputates, Brian McLaren had the following to say,

What of technologies that in a sense amputate presence? The television and the DVD, the videoconference and perhaps increasingly, the hologram, project our presence, but do they in some way amputate presence as well?

This is an important question because we are keenly aware of the ways technology benefits our worship but we seldom think about the ways it hinders it. In the name of “it’s new” or “it’s cool” or “it’s what everyone else is doing” we forge ahead and adopt new technologies without even considering how it affects our overall message.

The point I am trying to make here is that I really think it’s time that churches start asking the difficult question when considering incorporating new technology into their communities, “How will this affect our goal to love God and our neighbor?” The answer to that question will change the way many churches adopt new technology.

For instance, I am leading the effort at my church of building a social networking strategy. Social networking will introduce many benefits into how we do ministry. However, I am keenly aware of how it hinders us as well. Social networking diminishes presence and therefore is not a good tool for actually “doing” ministry. Because we cannot be physically present with the people in our network, we cannot physically lay hands on them to pray for them and I am sure everyone would agree that physical presence is far better than virtual presence. Just ask a wife whose husband is off fighting the war or a single mom whose only kid is away at college.

Social networking does open up opportunities to share information about what’s happening in our community. This is a huge benefit and is the limit to which our community needs to go. Praying for people, holding online bible studies and small group meetings is taking it too far.

“But what does this have to do with the virtual preacher”, you may ask? I’ll tell you that in part 2.

But I wonder if our concern should be content of the game or the medium of video games itself? Marshal Mcluhan was a great pioneer in the study of the social effects or technology says the following regarding the content of a particular medium,

The content or message of any particular medium has about as much importance as the stenciling on the casing of an atomic bomb.

It’s the medium that has the biggest impact on our culture. The content should not be ignored but we tend to spend more time fighting over the content than we do the medium itself.

Most of what “traditional values” asks of people is pretty hard. All the infidelity and divorce and premarital sex and bad parenting and whatnot take place because people actually want to do the things traditional values is telling them not to do. And the same goes for most of the rest of the Christian recipe. Acting in a charitable and forgiving manner all the time is hard. Loving your enemies is hard. Turning the other cheek is hard. Homosexuality is totally different. For a small minority of the population, of course, the injunction “don’t have sex with other men!” (or, as the case may be, other women) is painfully difficult to live up to. But for the vast majority of people this is really, really easy to do. Campaigns against gay rights, gay people, and gay sex thus have a lot of the structural elements of other forms of crusading against sexual excess or immorality, but they’re not really asking most people to do anything other than become self-righteous about their pre-existing preferences.

Bottom line, it’s really easy to campaign against a sin you don’t struggle with. In other words, its really easy to be hard or even non-gracious towards the homosexual when you do not struggle with that sin. The same goes for other sins like alcoholism or co-dependency.

The next time we get the temptation to look down upon someone because of their “heinous” sin perhaps we should consider how difficult it is for us to do something as “easy” as loving our neighbor on a consistent basis. Maybe when we see our own major shortcomings and constant battle with sin we will realize two things:

1. We need to be more gracious and loving towards those who have major sin struggles in areas we do not. And we should try to understand their struggle as much as possible rather than involving ourselves with sin crusades.
2. We sin because we want to sin. It is in our nature to sin. Sin feels good to us. And for this reason we should shudder at the fact that God still loves us (a sinner) as much as he love the “other sinners” too.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexandranicolephotography/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Gateway Church and Watermark Community Church also have new building projects though not as large as First Dallas. I’m not so troubled by those as I am First because I know a little more about the culture around there.

The following quote by Marva Dawn is telling:

We ignore the real situation in the world. While one small part of the world eases its pain by producing more and consuming more non-edible commodities, the rest of the world suffers an opposite kind of hopelessness-when persons are not able to secure the nourishment necessary to live.

Is the answer always more? Is the answer to a growing church always build a bigger building, consuming more energy, more land, more resources, and more money when there are people just down the street who do not know where their next meal is coming from?

There is so much more that we can do besides sinking enormous amounts of money into building projects and “cool” technology. I don’t have a problem with churches needing to expand as it is necessary at times. But it seems to me that there is a point at which it becomes too much and in these times we live in I think there are better ways such as splitting off the church into smaller gatherings so that the church’s facility budget does not exceed their missions budget.

But what if a military strategy is not the answer? What if in just this one instance it is better to lead with a strategy of economic development rather than war? Instead of calling on military leaders alone to plan a strategy what if the President called on the leaders of various nonprofit humanitarian organizations on the ground there and included them in the discussion.  It seems to me that that is a viable option. Think about it. These organizations have built strong relationships with the people there. To me, they would more willingly respond to the humanitarian organizations than they would the military.

What do you think, more troops or something else?