It was a pretty typical youth group meeting. We were having a discussion and I introduced what I thought was a pretty well known biblical passage. When I received glazed eye stares from the group, I asked if they indeed did know the passage. One honest young man said, “Dude, you can't possibly expect me to know that Bible story. With the amount of Simpsons that I watch, I don't have any brain space left for reading.” And he was correct. He watched so much TV and read so little that his brain couldn't grasp what I was asking him to do.
According to a 2003 survey done by the Canadian Teachers' Federation, 75 per cent of grade 9 students watch TV daily and 50 per cent of those boys will also play a video game every day. Over 90 per cent of grade 9s will watch a few DVDs in a month with over half watching movies a few times a week. Video, a term that covers pretty much everything that appears on a screen, dominates the adolescent life. Reading a book not for school? Around 20 per cent of grade 9 girls will read almost every day but this does not balance out the close to 60 per cent of grade 9 boys who will never read a book outside of school assuming that they do some of the reading for their classes. Bart triumphs over the Bard in almost every instance.
Recent neurological research indicates that adolescence is a time when our brains are literally expanding. The environment we are in physically shapes our brain, making some connections and breaking others. A steady diet of either reading books or watching video means that our brains take on different shapes, leading us to interpret and understand the world differently. Books shape us to see the word more rationally, more linearly, and more analytically because these are some of the strengths of print. Video, on the other hand, shapes us to be more experiential, more episodic and more relational. Youth raised on a steady of diet of video understand the world differently than those raised on regular servings of the printed word.
Somehow the church has missed this fundamental shift when we go to engage Scripture. For instance, our worship services still focus on the strengths of the printed word. Our near obsession with “decently and in good order” gets translated into linear analytic rationality. We read the Bible, out loud, and then explain it. We may have moved past three point sermons in an attempt to escape linearity but even the more narrative forms of preaching that we promote with varying degrees of success are still based on the basic structure of the printed novel. Even contemporary approaches to worship don't really solve the fundamental problem. Power Point is a more efficient and contemporary way of presenting a logical argument but it still assumes that people understand God in a rational, linear and analytic way.
The Emergent church movement, and the alt.worship community in general, at least have begun to grapple with this shift. Their worship incorporates the Bible but is heavily experiential, episodic and relational. Worship services might incorporate a DJ spinning records in the corner, mashing and overlaying Gregorian chants with electronic trance music to create a contemplative mood. Instead of sitting in pews facing forward soaking up the presentation of the word, the people gathered might move between different stations, experiencing different Scriptures through various activities as the Spirit moves them to. Most Emergent worship has a heavy art component. One service I attended gave all who entered the sanctuary space a sketch book and pastels or markers. As the service progressed people sketched and expressed their reaction to the Scriptures. Before the end, people shared with others their reactions, forming an entirely different interpretative community than we normally experience.
Scripture continues to witness to the Living Word in Emergent worship gatherings but is not limited by the printed words on the page. Rather, Emergent communities assume that the dominant way people relate to the world has been heavily conditioned by video. This assumption may scare those who don't see the world that way but if the Word really is Living then we should not fear changing our basic assumptions. Instead we should rejoice that God continues to work through Scripture to speak to each new generation. The word is dead! Long live the Word!
