A preacher who concerns himself with how a medium can increase his audience will miss the significant question: In what sense do new media alter what is meant by religion, by church, even by God?
One thing the media alters for us as Christians is community. In 1939 the Oxford Dictionary still thought of “connect” as something to do with face-to-face human interaction. Today an Internet dictionary describes it as “a causal or logical relation.” Connection is now digitized. This concept of connection at a distance has completely reshaped the way we speak of and understand communication and community.
I recently experienced this firsthand. After having been invited to an event by personal invitation, I received a terse email uninviting me. This difference between the invitation and uninvitation was particularly stark. The invitation was face-to-face, interpersonal and included the nuances of facial expression, greetings and warm communication. The uninvitation was brief, did not convey any emotional content and gave the impression of being the most expedient and effective way of executing the task.
As we move into a world that describes bursts of digital text as communication, we are being shaped in our view of what it is to be human, how to relate to one another and what it is to be community. This affects the way we understand God. Perhaps this is why Eugene Peterson translated John 1:14 as, “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, generous inside and out, true from start to finish.” This description of Jesus moving into our neighbourhood, along with his integrity, militates against such ideas as virtual community and digital communication.
There is something about the way we meet in the flesh as Christians to form our communities that expresses the very nature of the God we worship. Of course I am not saying that we should not have computers, use e-mail or watch television, nor am I arguing that we should ban screens and projectors from our worship. I am saying that we need to think carefully what we create and communicate when we use these media. Christian media critic Shane Hipps writes that media often work like the Mr. Subliminal skit from Saturday Night Live. In this skit Mr. Subliminal demands one thing while whispering another suggestion. Inevitably the hearer eventually complies with the whispered suggestion. As Christians we too can send subliminal messages that contradict what we say openly through our use of media. Some of these messages are as blatant as how we spend our church budget. Other messages are subtler; for example, the way we are directed to see church as a theatre where we gather to consume a production rather than to meet one another and God through that process. An Internet hug is better than nothing, but it is no patch on the real thing!
How do we respond to these challenges? One way is to keep asking the important questions. How do we follow a Jesus who has moved into our neighbourhood? How does what we believe and experience get lived out and communicated through our congregational communities? What are our blind spots? What are the subliminal messages we are sending out? Let's not be surprised if we find that the ways we have always done it in the past do not stand up well to these questions either.
