• Virtual Community & Video Venues

    March 20, 2009

    It’s not a new conversation, but there has been some recent discourse & interest around virtual community and the use of video venues for church communities. I wanted to point you toward a few resources of interest.

    © Oleg Gerasymenko | Dreamstime.com

    Bob Hyatt has written a great piece entitled, Video Venues: The Death of Preaching.  And I wholeheartedly agree with his thesis as well as closing remarks

    …just because God honors our silly methods occasionally doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look for better ways, perhaps less silly, perhaps ones with fewer unintended consequences.

    Shane Hipps, an acquaintance from Fuller, has caught some heat for his take on virtual community and in a recent podcast, “The Papacy of Celebrity,” had some good things to say about video venues as well.  The great thing about the perspective Shane is coming from is that he doesn’t need to demonize anything, he’s just trying to be honest about the full scope of these things.

    Podcast: Play in new window | Download

    I wouldn’t presume to speak for Bob or Shane, but as I have followed the various discussions and listened to what is being said, it’s because of my heart for spiritual formation that I lament the idea that connecting with people virtually could ever be God’s full intention for community.  More saddening, is the way in which we fail to see how the medium of video venues disfigures some of the most precious characteristics of the gospel and the Body of Christ – not because God can’t show up, but because of the adverse formative effect they have on people.

    If my kid steals some money from my wallet, I can probably fix the problem by crushing his hand with a wrench, but the point isn’t just fixing the problem, it’s fixing it in the right way.  There is no room in the Christian faith for being connected in community “at all costs,” much less for, good preaching “at all costs.”  That just misses the bigger point.  The medium really is the message, they are bound up with one another, which is why, in terms of discipleship, it’s not just about doing the right things, but about doing things the right ways.

    Perhaps for utilitarians, the means justify the ends, but for those who follow Christ and his invitation to “pick up your cross and follow me,” the means and the ends are indistinguishable.

    Related Posts

    1. A Primer on Intentional Community
    2. Toward a Missional Vision of Theological Education: Community Rootedness
    3. A ViralHope Video

    Posted in: church, community, gospel, Jesus, networking, preaching/teaching, social networking, spiritual formation

Recent Comments

  • Jim S said...

    1

    Thanks for sharing this information JR, great points Bob, Shane and you make. My thoughts, is there a way to use the “Video Venue” type medium as a way of helping members of our family/community feel connected when they have to be away from our Sunday morning gathering. I am mostly referring to, for example at least five members of the Living Hope community that are pilots and must be out of town, sometimes for more than one week at a time. I know that with my biological family we use the video mediums to “connect with one another” and close in the gap of the miles that physically separate us. I believe that a low-tech approach could serve this purpose. For example just a live video simulcast using something like sight speed. This would require an account to access it and when it is over it is over. I am actually thinking about trying this with small group as one of the members of our community is out of town this week. I would be interested in your thoughts on this.

    03/20/09 8:52 PM | Comment Link

  • jrrozko said...

    2

    Seems like what you are talking about isn't video venues, but ways to make localized community teaching available to members of that community while they are away, which is a great idea. Even that might go too far if we put in ordinate amount of emphasis on teaching, but a decent idea nonetheless. I'm all for using technology to help the actual members of a community stay connected, but not when it begins to cross into a line of an artificial sort of connection.

    03/21/09 6:27 PM | Comment Link

  • Doug Paul said...

    3

    I feel like this whole discussion is symptomatic of a larger problem: The modern evangelical church feels you can be a Christian without being a disciple.

    The video venue strategy is all about "getting people in and getting people saved" but then says, "and hopefully they plug in and become disciples." Over and over again we forget that the end game for Jesus wasn't conversion but discipleship. In fact, he seemed to have a few snarkey responses about converts.

    If the goal of the church is to make converts and video venues can accomplish it, then great. But converts isn't what Jesus is counting.

    Converts aren't the goal. The goal is discipleship. And everything I've seen on video venues leads me to believe that people are LESS LIKELY to become disciples in these types of environments because they subtly undermine community, participation and engagement ("medium is the message" line of thinking).

    I could make a thousand arguments as to why video teaching isn't scripturally sound (if Hebrews tells us to judge teaching based on the person's life…how do we judge their life when they live an hour away and we've never met them?), but I won't go down that bunny trail.

    Ultimately, it's got to come back to discipleship. When Paul talked about being happy that any method would lead to someone coming to Christ…they were immediately entering into discipleship, not simply conversion. That seems optional for us and it seems even more optional, to me, with video venues as we currently know it. Meaning, I'm open my opinion changing as I know several churches with video venues starting to embrace Missional Communities, et al. I guess we'll see in a few years if they are compatible or not. ;-)

    03/2/11 8:20 AM | Comment Link

  • jrrozko said...

    4

    So, if I hear you right, you think there's something important about discipleship ;)

    Couldn't agree more and I think it's this starting point, more than any other, that should catapult us into reflection and discussion about the theology which has led to relegating discipleship to the margins of our Christian imaginations and lives.

    Perhaps one of the most fruitful questions we can be asking ourselves today is, "What sort of theology emerges from and leads most naturally to the vision and practice of Kingdom discipleship?"

    For me, the answers to this question fall under the category of "missional theology."

    03/2/11 10:12 AM | Comment Link

  • Doug Paul said...

    5

    Maybe you should write an extensive, advanced education paper on such a topic, JR. ;-)

    03/2/11 10:46 AM | Comment Link

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