In the world at large, advances in technology force us to ask tough “we can, but should we?” questions about topics such as stem cell research and cloning. In the Church, we face similar, although more benign, dilemmas. We have the technological means to create Internet campuses and video venues, but should we? What, if any, are the ecclesiological side effects of these avenues of “progress”? Don’t we owe it to ourselves to at least consider the issue before we dive in? We think so.
In a recent entry on Christianity Today’s Out of Ur blog, Bob Hyatt shared a thoughtful critique of the video venue model. Knowing that there are two sides (at least) to the video venue issue, and in the interest of public discourse, we invited Hyatt (a pastor at the Evergreen Community in Portland, OR) and James Harleman (campus pastor at Mars Hill Church’s Lake City campus in Seattle, WA) to participate in an organized debate.
First, we asked Hyatt and Harleman to send us their top three advantages/disadvantages of video venues, and then gave them the opportunity to respond to each of the other’s points. Finally, we invited each participant to submit some final thoughts in reaction to the entire conversation. Compelling arguments were made on both sides of the aisle (so to speak) and, regardless of your stance on video venues, will give you plenty to contemplate.
— The COLLIDE Team
James Harleman’s First Advantage of Video Venues:
“Come and See” Easier. Super-sized congregations are a reality, from Acts 2 to the modern megachurch. Distributing a gifted preacher via video to localized gatherings removes a neighbor’s “time,” “distance,” or “gas price” excuses when asked to check out a church service. The provision of macro-level administration (non-profit status, HR, finance) alleviates distracting overhead (time, cost, manpower) and startup work that often bogs down or derails church planters and steals time from cultivating relationships. Congregations grow with out-of-the-gate momentum and a committed core that understands the mission and has confidence in the pulpit, so they are comfortable inviting neighbors.
Bob Hyatt’s response:
These are some great points! I think there are some good reasons to consider doing video venues. But there are reasons to be wary, or to prefer another approach.
First, I think it’s a mistake to see in the 3,000 saved out of the throngs visiting Jerusalem on Pentecost, who then dispersed back out all over the empire, anything like the modern-day megachurch.
Second, while I think inviting neighbors to church services should probably be a bit lower on our strategy list than it often is (after perhaps a good amount of relational time, inviting them into a home group, reading a book together, etc.), it’s true—having something in their neighborhood would minimize many common objections.
But that doesn’t necessitate a video venue.
What’s being proposed here is a way of localizing without the overhead of a new church plant. I think that’s a great idea, actually. It’s what our community is doing—different gatherings in different parts of town with a main teaching elder of their own and the other elders rotating in, still all part of the same community.
What’s retained there that’s lost in a video venue is something we see as absolutely crucial: interaction between those being taught and the ones teaching them. Even if you are not into dialogical preaching, there’s a benefit to the one teaching knowing those being taught and speaking directly into their lives that’s simply impossible to preserve in a video venue.
James Harleman’s Second Advantage of Video Venues:
Contextualization. I am part of a culture that thrives on blogging, twittering, discussing, and dissecting shared experiences—from a simulcast Beastie Boys concert, to The Dark Knight in IMAX, to last night’s Colbert Report. The reality that thousands around my city in various locations are hearing the same message at the same time—that we can meet and discuss even if not gathered presently—is exhilarating, promotes unity, and enhances the reality of shared mission. It also emphasizes the gospel’s universal application, and onsite pastors can add local context to their Sunday service as it transitions from hearing to responding.
Bob Hyatt’s response:
Hey, I’m part of that culture, too! And a huge thing for me and for those I see coming into our community is interaction. There are times we’re ready to passively receive, whether in front of the TV or in a movie, and there are other times we’re eager to actively engage. A concert DVD is one thing, but a live show in an intimate setting? That’s the ultimate.
If I have a choice in how we as a community interact with God’s Word, I’ll pick the active engagement engendered by many smaller gatherings with a live person leading the discussion/teaching over a single large gathering or even multiple video gatherings every time. Why? Because if we really want to talk about contextualization, we’re going to talk about i.
Again, I appreciate the intent here—promoting unity and a shared experience. Awesome. But why not one community in many places, each walking through the same passage with a live person rather than a video screen leading the discussion?
Take the unity and shared experience and multiply it with actual interactivity, the possibility of asking a question of the one teaching, the knowledge that the person speaking from God’s Word knows something about me, and then I think you really have something that speaks to today’s seeker and will, maybe, grab people more than, “Come watch a video with me.”
James Harleman’s Third Advantage of Video Venues:
Time Displacement. Regaining 10-20 hours often needed to deliver a quality weekly sermon and reinvesting that in people yields amazing fruit. When you counsel that couple with a struggling marriage instead of referring them out to pay a local counselor because you need more time for sermon prep, those churchgoers—and the congregants they know, and their non-Christian friends—experience the love and devotion. It’s more time to work alongside and encourage hardworking members, develop leaders, and visit the sick. Humility to delegate Sunday’s platform and step into people’s lives preaches as powerfully as the pulpit for a doubled impact.
Bob Hyatt’s response:
Let’s not pit time spent studying and actually teaching the people of your community against other parts of the pastoral role such as counseling. The fact is both are elements of the role of a pastoral elder in a local community. One of the requirements the New Testament gives us is that an elder be “able to teach.” Paul’s admonition to Timothy and, by extension, other pastors? Preach the Word.
That’s not to say that you can’t have pastors who work primarily in areas other than teaching. But it’s interesting to me that delegating the pulpit is “humility” while delegating some of the counseling load in order to better prepare to teach your community is not seen the same way.
I’m no Luddite. I’m in favor of using technology to enhance our teaching and to spread the gospel, but the arguments that I hear so often in favor of video venues (namely that not all pastors can or should teach, that using a video sermon frees up time for other things) seem to seriously minimize certain crucial aspects of both pastoring and the preaching event itself.
Take this philosophy to a logical extreme and in a video venue future there will be a handful of preachers franchised to every major population center in America and beyond, and we’ll have, perhaps irretrievably, sold ourselves to the Celebrity Pastor ethos and the professionalization of the gift of preaching. Seminaries will no longer train students to preach the Word—why would they? They’ll train strategic partners who know how to open and run a good franchise.
Does anyone really believe there isn’t a better way?
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Bob Hyatt’s First Disadvantage of Video Venues:
Video venues put unacceptable distance between leaders and the rest of the church. What’s already a negative of the megachurch—people who have no idea who their elders are and elders who can’t know more than a small percentage of their people—is taken to new heights by the video venue. In many cases, a church’s elders live in another town and in some cases, another state. What’s best is not to come up with new and creative ways to put space between the people teaching and those being taught. What’s best is to shrink that space as much as is humanly possible.
James Harleman’s response:
If the video venue setup box (order yours today, it comes with a set of steak knives) contained nothing more than one satellite dish, one projector, and one freckle-faced intern, that would be true. Local, onsite leadership is critical and addresses this issue directly, breaking up the “mega” feel and distributing a super-sized congregation to smaller locations closer to their homes and “third places” and closer to where the venues pastors live and breathe. As for distance, Jesus preached to thousands and was so short on face time with listeners they literally tore the roof off. Paul wrote loving letters of encouragement and exhortation to churches he never even set foot in. While subsequent preachers are neither God nor apostles, we can’t dismiss ministries of gifted men like Charles Spurgeon, who preached to 10,000 and didn’t dialogue from the stage or have every congregant over for tea and cookies. Traveling, circuit-riding preachers made Methodism the largest Protestant denomination in the 1800s. All of that to say God is creative and doesn’t prescribe one technique.
A venue might get a kick-start based on the fame or gifting of the preacher, but will wane or maintain based on the ability of onsite, local leadership. When congregants see the congruity between local leadership and the preacher, it also strengthens their faith in the unity and advancement of the gospel both in and beyond their local community. As stated earlier, delegating sermon prep gives the campus (venue) pastor more time to shrink that space between leader and congregant.
Bob Hyatt’s Second Disadvantage of Video Venues:
Video venues lead to fewer communicators of God’s Word, not more. Many advocates of video venues say there simply aren’t enough church planters and talented teachers to go around. And my response is that in a video venue world, there never will be. Pursued as a large scale strategy, video venues will inevitably lead to fewer and fewer gifted and experienced lay and vocational preachers. The gift of preaching— already suffering from over-professionalization—will become ever more the work of the celebrity.
James Harleman’s response:
That could create a self-perpetuating cycle if managed without wisdom, I suppose, but carries the assumption that local leaders never preach, or that they turn videos on midweek as well. In my case, we are predominantly video-based, but local pastors take an average of a Sunday a month, plus holidays, and most midweek teaching. This allows a guy to plant a church with a pressure valve, gaining more time for the millions of other church planting aspects while leveraging a gifted mass communicator. Teaching and preaching ability can be grown and tested at a more reasonable pace, and when you look at the statistics for failed church plants and burnt out pastors, I think a great case can be made for this method.
As for communication, I was a speech and debate guy in high school. One thing you find out quickly (and it snaps with Romans 12) is that “communicators” don’t share a singular gift; the word describes a variety of gifts. Some are fantastic orators, others are great debaters, and still others excel at impromptu. Most important, rarely is anyone excellent at all of these. Jonathan Edwards would write out and read his sermons word-by-word, line-by-line. If someone else teaches and employs Q&A, they may be built for that type of ministry. However, if someone is a spectacular orator with a gift capable of impacting thousands, should we shoehorn that gifting into a small “dialogical” venue or utilize it in its most natural and potent expression?
Bob Hyatt’s Third Disadvantage of Video Venues:
Video venues encourage the celebrity church. Rather than working against the church as cult of personality, the video venue waves the white flag and surrenders itself to be ravaged by the celebrity and consumer impulse of Christians—an impulse we are otherwise trying to counter, but not-so-subtly reinforcing by refusing to see people get saved and discipled at your community, or spend a season there, and then point them to your pod/vodcast, and send them as part of a church plant to reach their local communities. It may stoke our egos to admit that people want to hear us more than they want to hear a church planter, but it doesn’t encourage maturity in them or us.
James Harleman’s response:
Cult of personality has nothing to do with size. In high school, I lived in a town the size of Mayberry and the church of 200 on Main Street was built around a celebrity pastor. In fact, in the music world, fans of independent bands are sometimes more rabid, loyal, and idolatrous than laissez-faire fans of mainstream bands. If enough people rally around a dude to cover his paycheck and would stop coming if he weren’t around, ta-dah!, you’ve got a cult of personality. Idolatry is idolatry: Islam is monotheistic in concept, whereas Hinduism features 33 million gods with clusters of worshipers for each one. In both places, the worship is misplaced.
It might stoke my ego to find a cluster of folks who want to hear me more than the nearest megachurch preacher, but if I can bring it all together under one roof and we can do mission together I’m totally game. Humbly recognizing a great orator encourages maturity in me and helps me mature my church. I grew up in Seattle watching Saturday Night Live and our local homespun Almost Live. One was national, one was local, but both were relevant, applicable to my life, and evoked barrels of laughter. On a far more serious note (although parts of the Bible are hilarious) employing technology to bring people to Jesus using a combination of elements relevant to the way our culture encounters other worldviews seems like a win for the gospel in my book.
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Bob Hyatt’s Conclusion:
Again, I think some great points are being made here. But I’m concerned that in terms of leadership, video venues represent something sub-biblical, and as they are currently being rolled out in city after city across America, they often represent less than the best for congregants. They may have a caring campus pastor who’s a little less stressed, but where are their elders? In another town? Can people in Grapevine, TX, effectively lead and care for a church community in Miami, FL, or people in Seattle a church in Olympia, WA? Campus pastor, yes. Biblical eldership? I’m unconvinced.
Yes, Jesus preached to thousands. That was Jesus. What those He left started were smaller communities where “elders in every town” were of utmost importance. Paul wrote letters to help guide churches he never met, and the local elders of those churches read, discussed, and taught from those letters as well as the other Scriptures Sunday after Sunday.
I don’t think either is a justification for video venues, but maybe a good rationale for Mark Driscoll/Andy Stanley/Ed Young, Jr. book clubs across the country.
Circuit riders were an accommodation for a new and growing movement until pastors could be raised up. And Spurgeon preached to thousands, true. Without iTunes or radio, that was the only option. But it doesn’t make it ideal. And to be honest, in a world where I can listen to many good teachers on my iPod on the way to work, I can’t see much reason to gather week after week on a Sunday to watch a screen displaying someone I’ve never met teach the Word. I’ll take a less eloquent or less flashy communicator who can speak directly to what’s happening between me and those sitting around me any day.
Yes, consumerism and the cult of personality is alive and well in churches big and small. But if we’re really concerned about those things, we’ll do that which works against it, not feeds it.
A lot of big churches could easily put out a call and have droves of church planters ready, willing, and able to go to start local communities, raise up elders, and see people come to Jesus. Instead, these big churches are franchising into nearby towns and far away cities and distant states, which doesn’t do much but feed the same consumerism that I believe is killing the Church in so many ways.
James Harleman’s Conclusion:
Jonah walked in and called Ninevah to repentance; he was neither dynamic nor enthused, yet God used the power of the Assyrian king to spread news throughout the city, bringing 120,000 to their knees. As kingly declarations were perhaps the most powerful form of broadcast in its day, I believe God can use pagan kings, satellites, or a series of tubes invented by Al Gore to distribute gospel proclamation throughout a city today. Video campuses add another weapon in the arsenal for planting missional communities. Not intended to replace church planting, they simply add another bullet in the gospel gun.
Paul wrote a letter to the Colossians even though he’d never been there; with a satellite feed from his Roman prison cell, I’m betting he would have exhorted and encouraged churches he’d planted personally as well as ones he’d sent leaders to build. Criticizing video campuses is fair; we should analyze strengths and weaknesses in our methods and men so we constantly improve. However, to base criticism against video in contrast to the need to have interactive “dialogical preaching” seems odd. Calling dialogical teaching “preaching” seems more debatable than using 21st-century proclamation methods for our pulpits; perhaps the argument is really about the purpose of the pulpit as a whole.
Preaching is heralding; the word-picture is that of the bell-ringer, the town crier, the Silver Surfer announcing Galactus’s arrival. Good teaching involves dialogue, but preaching is proclamation. This is the difference between declaration and conversation. Both are essential; I would never disparage the intimate, redemptive interaction we see between Philip and the eunuch. However, Peter preached to a full square in Acts 2 and men like Spurgeon used monologue to reach thousands on a Sunday. Today, particularly in a city where zoning laws restrict large church spaces, real estate prices are insane, or gatherings are restricted, video is simply a modern medium that continues a biblical tradition.
Perhaps the unspoken assumption is that nothing goes on at video venues except Sunday services. Local pastors should be able to put together a good sermon, engage in teaching (including dialogue), equip members, and counsel congregants. No one will follow a good emcee for long; the “Seacrest” appeal wanes quickly if there’s no strength in leadership. Thank God Church is not a day or a person, but a community both local and global. Done right, video campuses uniquely emphasize that unity.
Now that we’ve got this “video venue” topic settled, we’d love to hear your feedback. Send us an email with your thoughts on the pros and cons of video venues to feedback@collidemagazine.com. To learn more about James Harleman and Mars Hill Church’s Lake City campus, visit lakecity.marshillchurch.org. For more about Bob Hyatt and the Evergreen Community, visit www.evergreenlife.org.