Why is it that so many of us have bought into this technological revolution? We have to recognize the big “bluff” of the encompassing technological milieu—that we are misled by its bold (and often false) promises, which disguise the negative aspects of whatever is being endorsed. Do we see how the advertising world bluffs us into thinking that more technology or more implementation of the wired world’s possibilities is the only solution to world problems in economics and politics; to such church problems as the decline in worship attendance, the reduction of membership numbers, or the lack of interest in “church”; and to personal or family problems?

— Marva Dawn, Unfettered Hope

It’s easy to fault the leadership of these companies as caring more about money than human beings. However, a bigger part of the problem is a gadget obsessed culture who wants everything now and is willing to pay top dollar and go into debt. This puts tremendous pressure on gadget factories like Foxconn to meet demand. Employees are forced to sign affidavit’s requiring them to work 60-100 hours of overtime.

You can’t wait for your iPhone and I can’t wait for my Droid because we are convinced these products will make our lives better, more complete. Something has gone wrong when Christians, dare I say, churches themselves promote this mentality through consumer oriented worship “experiences” that reinforce our obsession with things that make us feel good.

So what are we to do? I don’t know for sure, because I don’t believe there is an easy answer. I do have a couple suggestions and maybe you can offer some in the comments below.

1. Take a second look at the worship in our churches. If you are in a position to make the call on how your church worships, I would strongly encourage you to educate yourself on the ways various worship experiences reinforce damaging consumeristic mentalities. A good place to start is by reading the works of a theologian and worship expert names Marva Dawn (A Royal Waste of Time, Reaching Out Without Dumbing Down, and Unfettered Hope).
2. Evaluate your own lust for “stuff” and don’t hesitate to make some necessary adjustments. If you can barely pay your rent, mortgage payment, or tuition bill every month, you probably should not be purchasing the high end gadgets.

Laura Bush Approves of Gay Marriage – I never knew she felt this way.

Is it Joel Osteen or a Fortune Cookie? – You be the judge. Tim Challies, Christian web designer and theologian (sounds familiar), lists twelve statements in which you choose whether or not it is from a fortune cookie or Joel Osteen. Is there a difference? Find out.

Emotional Pornography – Does it even exist? This guy thinks so. And I fully agree with him.

Go to God before you go to technology - A great article on how to pray then make a move.

How do you discover your spiritual gift? – Jaun Sanchez believes that is the wrong question. Read the rest here.

Last month at a major conference for facebook they added additional features that expose even more user data by default. One of the major changes that happened over the past few months is that photo galleries were made public. So now, it’s a lot easier to facebook stalk someone. You can see their photos, read their status updates, and even see the pages they are fans of.

That’s a problem, especially for churches who desire to use facebook as a way to reach out to the unchurched or anyone looking for a new church. For instance, let’s say you are looking for a new church and you happen upon the website of First Church of Jesus Christ Holiness Charismatic Fellowship of the North and see that they have a facebook page. You start checking out its fans and you notice several have their photo albums public. If you noticed a few pictures that are a little on the sexually racy side, what kind of conclusions/assumptions are you going to make about that church and it’s members? Probably not a good one. And therein lies the problem.

The privacy issue simultaneously creates the conditions for a PR issue for churches. Some of you may be thinking that it makes no sense to judge a person without actually meeting them. However, this is what is typical in a society that is obsessed with facebook.

At any rate I think we need to do two things:

1. Lock down your facebook profile to protect your private information.
2. If you are in charge of the facebook page for your church, begin educating your members about removing their photos from public view. This will help keep some of the questionable images from becoming a problem.

I personally find it a little shocking how cavalier a company as large as facebook has been with handling user data. Now it all makes sense after reading this IM conversation between 19yr old Mark Zuckberg and a college friend:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don’t know why.

Zuck: They “trust me”

Zuck: Dumb fucks.

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.

“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.

When this church is questioned about their tactics, they respond, “Well, there is nothing wrong with what we are doing. Our method is different from traditional preaching but the message is still the same.” Inherent in this thinking is the idea that the method of communication and the message are not connected in any way.  In other words, there is no connection between the method one uses and the message that is conveyed. But the reality is that whenever the method changes, the message automatically changes as well.

Marshall McLuhan has been credited with being responsible for introducing us to the social impacts of technology on humans. He coined the phrase, “The medium is the message,” because he believed that every medium has its own message. The quote at the beginning of this article assumes that technology is neutral. But McLuhan believed that technology was powerful enough to shape our thoughts and values, regardless of the content. We generally think that as long as we are careful about the content, the medium itself is not really the issue. For instance, I used to think that television was a neutral medium. I did not think there was anything wrong with television at all, that I could watch whatever I wanted as long as I did not watch anything R-rated. I assumed that as long as I was watching “quality” television, TV was good, and if it watched R-rated stuff, TV was bad.  I was focused more on the content (R-rated shows) than I was on the medium (television) itself. According to McLuhan, “The content of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind.” The content of the medium distracted me from the real message it was sending.

Shane Hipps who wrote, “The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture” made the following comment about TV, “We are oblivious to the ways the medium, regardless of its content, reduces our capacity for abstract thought, makes us prefer intuition and experience over logic and reasoning, and revives tribal experiences in an individualistic culture.” This statement reveals the truth that I believe every medium has an embedded message that presents itself as truth, but is really a lie. One of the lies of television that Shane’s comment exposes is that experience is better than reasoning and logic. But that’s not always true.

Marva Dawn, who wrote “Unfettered Hope”, calls these lies, bluffs. She says, “Why is it that so many of us have bought into this technological revolution? We have to recognize the big “bluff” of the encompassing technological milieu—that we are misled by its bold (and often false) promises, which disguise the negative aspects of whatever is being endorsed.” She continues, “Do we see how the advertising world bluffs us into thinking that more technology or more implementation of the wired world’s possibilities is the only solution to world problems in economics and politics; to such church problems as the decline in worship attendance, and the reduction of membership numbers, or the lack of interest in “church”; and to personal or family problems?”

Technology is very skilled at hiding its lies. Lies that have had negative impact on the way we live out our faith. There are three major concepts that technology has bluffed is into thinking are true: (1) faster is always better, (2)faster will save time, (3) more stuff will solve my problems, and (4) I need the latest and greatest to keep from being outdated. When these ideas are deeply engrained in our minds it becomes difficult to remain content (Philippians 4:11; 1 Corinthians 11:1).

Christians are to be content no matter what the circumstances. But the problem is that at every turn the advertising world bluff us into thinking that what we have is not enough, too slow, outdated, and is not working. And every time we make a purchase or consume technology while subconsciously believing these lies, we are reinforcing them in our psyche. Perhaps this may explain why the same characteristics we use to measure the value of our entertainment, we use to measure the content of our religious experiences (i.e. sermons, congregational singing). Or maybe this is why so many of us, instead of being patient with the sanctification process, we get frustrated, give up and give in to our sins.

No matter how you slice it, the technological paradigm has had a really negative effect on Christianity. But let me be clear. It is not technology in itself but the way the entire paradigm impacts our thinking. Our use of technology should be accompanied with better questions. My friend John Dyer who is one of the smartest guys I know (and who I find myself regularly intimidated around) offers “A Model for Theological Reflection on Technology.” He has provided a great example of how to apply the model as well.

There are times where there is nothing we can do about advances in technology. For instance it would not be possible or even desireable to return to the horse and buggy. But there are situations where we can make choices that go against the rules of the technological paradigm instead of confirming them. And when we are presented with these opportunities, perhaps we should take them. For instance, we can shop at a local baker instead of a major chain store. There are times when choosing the local baker means he/she may not have the items we want, where the chain store always does. So what we do is we typically go to the chain store because it provides the quick fix to our problems. And this is precisely why the technological paradigm has been a dangerous influence in our faith.
 

This is an area that I have been studying for the past year and it has resulted in my making some changes in my life with regard to how I use technology. So as an introduction, I would like to direct your attention to a series of podcasts that my friend John Dyer was invited to speak on about the impact of technology on our lives. I have provided direct links to these podcasts below. Enjoy and I can’t wait to start conversing with you on this very important topic. I will leave you with the following quote from Marva Dawn who wrote “Unfettered Hope” which is a book that takes a look at how technology has turned the focus of Christianity from the poor towards ourselves.

“Do we see how the advertising world bluffs us into thinking that more technology or more implementation of the wired worlds possibilities is the only solution to the world problems in economics and politics; to such church problems as the decline in worship attendance, the reduction of membership numbers, or the lack of interest in “church”; and to personal or family problems? . . .

Meanwhile, we ignore the real situation in the world. While one small part of the world eases its pain by producing and consuming more…commodities, the rest of the world suffers the opposite kind of hopelessness—when persons are not able to secure the nourishment necessary to live.”

Here are the links to the podcasts that will introduce you to this issue:

The Medium is the Message

Technology’s Effect on People

Technology and Relationships