In his book, "The Millennium Matrix" M. Rex Miller has some rather interesting things to say about the future of worship, preaching, and community in the emerging church. He breaks human history into four periods - oral, written, televised, and digital - and commences to give some rather interesting insights into how the church has moved (or ceased to move) along with the changes.
He says the oral era church had a "father" who did the rituals (liturgy) to reinact the events of old, thereby including all of the "children" in the history. This era began at the dawn of human history and lasted up to the Reformation.
The written era church had a "professor" (hence, the robes) who intellectualized the content for the informed and educated. This era entered with the Reformation and ended around 1950. (Question: If the written era is over, why are most of our mainline churches still leading worship like the oral and written era folks? Answer: Most of your seminary professors were educated by seminary professors who were educated before television. Think on that for a moment.)
The television culture at best is producing a television era church that tells stories and, at worst, breaks everything into sound bytes. The danger in this church, like the danger in any passive medium, is that it often lacks connections to community. My Sunday school superintendent in my first church was also the governor's body guard. On certain Sunday's when he was on duty in the Twin Cities escourting the governor to church, he loved to go to the big flagship church with 12,000 members and an army of parking attendents. The reason? You could get in and out in a guaranteed 45 minutes with a good show and you wouldn't have to shake a hand.
Now here's the Homeric "douh!" for all your FINKs who want to put on "a good show" for the kids: Do the best show you can, but remember that in a high tech presentation, you also need a high touch element or church is just a show.
Do you have people hold hands for opening prayer and gather in small groups to share Highs & Lows, lock arms in a huddle prayer for the real issues in their lives, and discuss how the theme of the day relates to them? Is ther a blessing touch? We will do everything we can to create a great theme/teaching event, but we know that the real magic happens in the small group. No amount of teaching will bring kids back after confirmation day. It will be the community of friends, hopefully with Christ at the core.
Rex's digital era church reframes community, and demands that worship includes us in the shaping, not just in the showing. It must be not only experiential (television) but interactive, participatory, and connected to community. (Sound's a little Sweetish?).
How is worship different in the digital age? Here's a snippet from Rex's interview in Homiletics Online. (Click here to read the whole article)
MILLER: First, the venue is very different. It’s interactive. It’s not a celebrity or some person you’re attracted to, or that you’re going to sit through a very polished, pre-packaged presentation. It’s raw, it’s interactive, it’s peer-based, it’s like going to an improv theater where there may be a certain context that is set but the direction and where it goes once the context is set has a lot to do with the particular audience that is there; you build up what the audience brings, instead of being the one driving the bus.
The skill set completely different, and the scale and size have to be smaller to be interactive, so if you make the music analogy, the Protestant and Reformation churches were like an orchestra, the celebration churches were like a band — a combo or rock band. Now we’re moving more into like a jazz motif where the interaction between the musicians is the real power and dynamic. It’s not the content. It’s what they create on the spot, and the other nice thing is that you don’t have to separate the ages — the youth here, the seniors there, the kids there, singles here. The broadcast era is all about pitching the message and content to certain demographics. In the digital era, you can have the kids there, the grandparents there because they’re all creating the experience together; it’s a collaborative experience.
So, what does this mean for us?
Maybe the skits, the faith stories, the video clips, the game shows we do better pull the audience in as participants - not spectators. Maybe we should worry less if everything is polished, and worry more that it is raw, real, and relational.
Maybe we ought to break in the middle of worship - not just confirmation and GIFT Sunday School - and get small groups together to share Highs & Lows, discussion, prayer and blessing.
Maybe the prayers of the people ought to come from the people. (Remember to bring the Highs & Lows from each small group into the closing!)
Maybe the preacher should be clear in saying, "I need you to break now and discuss the text as it relates to your lives. Then come back here and finish my sermon. The sermon isn't over until the people of God have spoken!"
Maybe the discussion needs to continue online during the week with your small group. Maybe your church should have live chat every day at noon and every night at 9 for the continuing Bible Study, hosted by your college kids across the globe.
Maybe rather than publishing houses, the church needs networks of creativity where members of that network aren't consumers, but prosumers (producer/consumers) who uses 60-90% of what the network produces (so they don't have to create everything every week), then adds their own best stuff - not just for their own little flock - and shares their best with the rest.
Closing Thought: Slocky Commercial Message
Okay, I'm going to break every rule of the web right now and toot a one-way horn:
FINK is designed to be that kind of network. We have people come to us for a few years, learn how to do our systems, then take off to "write their own stuff". Some of them never come back. We taught them well that "you don't need a better workbook, you need a better way."
Many of them come back after a few years, realizing they're spending 10 hours a week trying to invent all their own stuff and, at Burger King wages, that's $2500 a year in time that they could have been spending with their kids. They decide they'd rather use 60-90% of our best stuff (gathered from our network) and add their own best stuff than invent it all week after week.
Here ends the commercial. You can come back now.
So read the article in Holiletics Online and buy the book by M. Rex Miller if you are so inclined. Me? I'm going to see if I can find his email address and begin an "elationship" with the guy.
It's not that I'm cheap. (Okay, that's part of it.)
I just want more than the written word.
RAM
(PS - Kudos to Debbie Streicher who emailed me the link to the book at 5 am this morning. It's life grand in a digital world?)
Rich,
Thanks for the review. I've added a link to this article and your site. Let the feedback role!
Rex
Posted by: rex | October 25, 2004 at 08:06 AM