The Chick-fil-A ChurchHow "video venues" are helping megachurches franchise.
Posted Friday, Aug. 15, 2008, at 12:37 PM ET
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StumbleUponTo many Christians, though, the sermon is the main event. It's when all eyes are on the pulpit. It's when the leader of the church teaches. It's when the messages in the Bible are distilled for the faithful. Filling that job with piped-in pixels only feeds the celebrity pastor's star power while creating competition for less-gifted communicators.
And as an engine of church growth, video preaching poses problems for even the most ardent evangelicals. Some fear it will allow well-known pastors to swoop into new territories and roll up struggling locally led churches while rolling over smaller ones, especially those tied to mainline Protestant denominations, such as the Presbyterians and Baptists, that are already losing adherents to nondenominational megachurches—and talented pastors to other careers. "Where does a man or woman who feels called to preach get practical experience if their local church is a video venue?" says Bob Hyatt, founder of the Evergreen Community, a small evangelical church that holds services in two pubs in Portland, Ore.
Saddleback Church's Rick Warren, perhaps the best-known megachurch leader in the country, has said for years that he never broadcast his services on television for just that reason. But he has evidently softened his stance: This spring, Saddleback opened the first three of 10 planned video venues in and around its Orange County, Calif., home. "We're not reaching out because we need to be bigger, we're reaching out because more people need Jesus," the church's Web site says. Try telling that to the small-time minister when Mr. Purpose-Driven Life comes to town.
And it's not just a problem for other pastors. In fact, says Shane Hipps, author of The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media Shapes Faith, the Gospel, and Church, using video goes against a critical tenet of Protestant faith: the priesthood of all believers. Instead of a real experience, it offers a mediated one that inherently puts the pastor in a position of greater power over the masses. "It's actually undermining their theology," he told me recently. Hipps, who worked in advertising for Porsche before entering the seminary, says the small Mennonite community he leads in Glendale, Ariz., asked him to consider adding a "video venue" service. He expressed serious reservations. Even podcasting his sermons makes him uncomfortable. He started doing it for the benefit of elderly members who couldn't make it to church, but a year later, his own minor celebrity has helped him acquire 12,000 subscribers.
Are Hipps and other critics just Luddites, unable to see the power of technology to spread the Gospel? Perhaps. As megachurch pastors like to note, the apostle Paul delivered his epistles guiding early church development from long distance. And in 18th-century America, traveling Methodist preachers known as circuit riders started strings of churches, some of which they returned to just a few times a year. Without horses, they would have reached far fewer people. Without video, the argument goes, today's gifted preachers could reach only a fraction of the converts to their brand of Christianity.
And for Christians looking to create community on a more intimate level, video venues do present an alternative to the suburban megaflock. While some people find it strange at first to worship in front of a big screen, they frequently come to view it as no different than attending a service that is totally live, supporters say. And one day, they might be able to relocate to a new town without changing pastors.
But as Starbucks itself recently learned, even the most successful brands can get too ubiquitous. That probably applies to those that are divinely inspired, too.
Correction, Aug. 20, 2008: This article incorrectly stated that Shane Hipps' community asked him to "go multisite" and that he refused. The members asked him to add a "video venue" service, and he expressed reservations. Additionally, Hipps' podcast subscribers number 12,000, not 6,000. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
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Remarks from the Fray:
I used to attend an offshoot of Willow Creek's model, and it's sad to say that churches can't care for people when leadership isn't present. I think these video venues are great for the occasional change of pace or a weekend pick me up, but Christ calls His children to do more than just present the Gospel. They also need to model it, live it, and walk with people through this crazy thing called life.
--reesefire
(To reply, click here.)
I become more and more amazed at how circular the history of church culture in America seems. The protestant ethos that many claim is an important element of what it means to be 'American' grew from a desire to escape an all-encompassing church from a centralized authority and get back to "the real way God wanted it." Fast forward 500 years and the cycle continues to repeat itself with suburban America standing in for Rome and disillusioned evangelicals starting home churches, missions, and non-denominational organizations like The Simple Way.
Meanwhile the dwindling number of members of mainline protestant denominations that have for generations been teaching the importance of social justice, redemption, and community-building are left scratching their heads wondering why another new church has to get started when they've been around for hundreds of years.
--OhNoNotAgain
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LifeChurch.tv came to my town a couple of years ago. They built a big building on the outskirts of town. It stands alone in what was a cow pasture. The landscape around the building hasn't been much altered, not yet anyway. No artfully arrayed trees or bushes soften the building's outlines or disguise its mass. There're only multiple entrances and a large parking lot to let you know that it's a place where people congregate. The building is incongruous; it erupts out of the ground like a monument. It's not part of a neighborhood. If not for the LifeChurh.tv logos, you might be forgiven for thinking the place was some kind of sports and fitness complex.
The place draws a pretty good crowd on Sunday mornings. I had occasion to drive past one Sunday just as services were ending. The two-lane country road the church borders clearly wasn't designed to handle that amount of traffic. People put up with it I guess. So the place must offer something people want. It's not as if there weren't already plenty of churches to choose from in my town.
I've never attended a LifeChurch.tv service, but one of my friends has. She and her husband were looking for a church to which they could take their kids. Neither parent is a firm believer; both are what I would describe as casual agnostics. But both felt that some form of instruction in public and private virtue would benefit their young kids. And, not least of all, neither wanted the children to be the odd ones out when all the other kids at school were talking about going to church. So they began looking for some congregation that didn't demand too much in terms of belief or participation. They didn't want to commit to a dogma or a community. They wanted to be able to take what they needed or wanted with few strings attached. I guess LifeChurch.tv gave them that. From what I understand there's a lot of music and celebration, a few prayers and other items of church business conducted by a local pastor, and big screen sermon beamed in from the leader's Oklahoma City church. I'm told it's all typically fun, spiritually uplifting, and life affirming. No contentious political issues are discussed, there's not much talk of narrow paths, the emphasis is on redemption rather than sin and damnation, and appeals for support are low key.
Of course my friends have only been attending the LifeChurch.tv services for a few months, so maybe they haven't yet seen all there is to see. But to me it sounds as if the fast food analogy is fairly apt. You won't find a lot of unique, local flavor in these churches but you pretty much know what you're going to get. And what you'll get has been designed to be broadly appealing. It's convenient and you don't have to worry that the place will go under without your patronage. I can see the appeal, I guess. I wouldn't want to live exclusively on that fare, mind you, and I wouldn't recommend that diet to anyone else. But plenty of people seem to like it.
--Havelock
(To reply, click here.)
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