VideoTeaching.com Launching July 21

| By Scott McClellan | Found in Design, Technology, The Web | 6 Comments

I blogged about LifeChurch.tv‘s VideoTeaching.com in an explosive and controversial post titled “The Future of Preaching” in April, and now the site is set to launch July 21. Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing how different people, groups, and churches end up using VideoTeaching.com. According to the website, the team at LifeChurch.tv envisions a few different scenarios:

Smaller churches who are looking to fill their pulpit and would love to have access to the best teachers via video as an alternative. Pastors who would like to use video teaching as a fill for them when they go on holiday. Larger churches who are looking to expand their teaching team using video teaching.

There are a few interesting possibilities there. Imagine churches who enjoy bringing in guest speakers deciding to conserve resources by pushing ‘Play’ on a great sermon from VideoTeaching.com. Imagine senior pastors who decide to lighten their preaching load by using a message from VideoTeaching.com every sixth Sunday.

Beyond those ideas, I’m still waiting for the day when we see churches (big and small, old and new) who forgo a full-time teaching pastor position in favor of picking and choosing from among the best VideoTeaching.com has to offer. I’m still waiting for a group of people who enjoy the teaching of a VideoTeaching.com communicator but don’t live near one of his official locations to start one of their own. Yes, these scenarios raise a gaggle of technological, theological, and ecclesiological questions, but that doesn’t mean they won’t become realities soon enough. As for which communicators will be featured on the site when it launches, well, the site doesn’t say just yet. (I can, however, make out Mark Batterson, Craig Groeschel, and Dino Rizzo on the sneak peek image at VideoTeaching.com, so that’s a start.)

How about a VideoTeaching.com-related poll question?

[poll id="4"]

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  • http://www.ohiovalleyrevolution.com Vanessa

    I am actually a part of a team that is in the process of planning a church launch that will be FULLY dependent on video teaching. We are a group of people who love Jesus and feel called to provide a different worship experience than the traditional churches that are in our area. We have no formal education in theology or ministry, we have no denomination backing us, we have no lump sum of money to start from, and no building to meet in. We simply have a vision from God of what our community needs and we are moving forward trusting that if it is Gods will, then it's Gods bill and He's gonna have to work all of those details out. VideoTeaching.com will be a HUGE blessing to us because we will not be hiring a teaching pastor. =) We know it is an upside down church plant because most people have a pastor who gathers a team to start a church, but we are a team that gets to choose our pastor…..and we're going to choose the best of the best when it comes to whatever subject is being preached on. WOOHOO!!! Pray for us…and THANKS Lifechurch.tv!

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/floodgatepro floodgatepro

    I love this idea! The question is not whether church members and attenders will benefit and enjoy this format. They'll love it. The question is whether or not pastors are willing to give up the pulpit to someone who's really, really good at communicating. It'll take a secure pastor to do this.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/matthuggins matthuggins

    Makes me wonder why God chose Moses, who was, in human terms, a poor communicator, instead of one of the silver-tongued alternatives. A preachers' authority and effectiveness are not bound up in his eloquence.

    If this is such a grand idea, there's no reason why, for all these centuries, we didn't simply hire actors to give dramatic readings of the best sermons. Spurgeon and Whitfield and Edwards, etc., etc. could then "preach" in pulpits throughout the land. This technology provides nothing that was not, in all material respects, available to us long before electronic media. I believe considerations apart from technological means have kept the church, for the most part, from this model of preaching.

    Stop to consider whether it may be important for the Word to be preached to a congregation by one of its own, one who knows and is known by the sheep, one who prays with and for the sheep, one who leads by example during the 167 hours each week when he is not preaching, one whose ability to shape his public persona a bit less than a televised "character" with no direct connection to the congregation.

    Stop to consider how much an entertainment and celebrity driven mindset informs our views of preaching and preachers. Might we be tempted to conform to the world in this respect?

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/ScottMcClellan ScottMcClellan

    Thanks for the thoughts, Matt. I think the questions you're asking are vitally important, and I hope that churches on all sides of this discussion think through these things.

  • http://www.garymo.com/2009/07/is-that-really-church/ It’s Complicated – Is That Really Church?

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  • http://intensedebate.com/people/sampeckham sampeckham

    I voted on the side 'we'll probably try it' but not for our main congregation, we'll probably try it for our older Youth who we want to get to be in the service for the whole morning. To them it's the preaching that is the barrier and by using these videos we can go through preaching with them, pause to answer questions and help them to understand why God choose the 'foolishness of preaching'.

    On the whole church front the idea of actors reading sermons that Matt made is very valid point, and reminds me of Paul's letters that were read out in the Churches. Now you could argue video messages are the modern equivalent, but we should never forget that while Paul wrote a lot to churches, he insured there was a Timothy in each church too.

    The danger of picking and choosing all your preaching from video is that you'll only hear what your 'ears are itching to hear'. But as Mark Driscoll often points out, the preaching you need starts out as offensive, it beats you up, you resist it, and then you learn from it and God builds you up through it.