Mark Dawes, Staff Reporter

The movement towards embracing visual technologies is not without its prophets who have been issuing warnings. One such is Bishop Will Willimon, of the United Methodist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Writing in Leadership Journal, the bishop points out in an article called 'Power Pointless' that preaching is inherently a sharing of the mystery of God's revelation of Himself. He warns that technology can serve to dilute the communication of this mystery. Religion, he said, can become a technique for getting what 'I want' rather than what 'God wants'.

The marriage between sermons and Powerpoint

It is becoming the norm in many churches. A big screen behind or beside the preacher. On it are the points and subpoints of the sermon being preached. It signals that churches have entered into the age of 'visualcy' - a term coined by Andy Crouch of the Christian Vision Project.

Pastors in North America and, increasingly, in Jamaica are using Powerpoint, film clips, photos and videos as means of complementing and even augmenting the spoken word. This trend is the subject of major coverage in the Summer 2007 edition of Leadership Journal, a publication of Christianity Today International.

Mr. Crouch is quoted as saying, "Many centuries after the shift from oral to written culture, we are now well along in the transition to visual culture - where the predominant mode of communication is images rather than words. Just as the shift to writing required the skills we call literacy, so visual culture requires its own skills - for lack of a better word, visualcy."

In 'Preaching by faith & by sight', Leadership's managing editor, Eric Reed wrote, "Our recent survey of preachers shows the visual revolution is well under way. And this is about much more than widescreen lyrics … and few flying-bullet sermon points."

Leadership, he noted, surveyed 515 subscribers who are principally pastors who preach regularly. He noted, "Most have entered the visual fray - some signed on willingly, others feel conscripted - but almost all have felt the ground shift beneath their pulpits as technologies, audience expectations, and Game Boy learning styles make new demands on preaching. And on the preacher."

drop-down screen

One famous preacher is reported as having said to fellow preachers, "If you don't have a drop-down screen, 10 years from now your ministry will be dead."

According to the Leadership survey, about 73 per cent of churches now regularly use some kind of visual enhancement in their worship services.

A little more than half the pastors surveyed (58 per cent) reported that their use of Powerpoint had increased within the last three years. Half of the pastors said they are also using in church more multimedia clips from movies, television or other sources.

On average, in churches of all sizes, 39 per cent of pastors produce the visuals themselves to be used to complement their sermons. A further 38 per cent of pastors collaborate in the creation of these visuals. Twenty-three per cent of pastors delegate the visuals creation to someone else.

Functional demands, rather than artistic considerations, dominate the usage of visual elements in churches. The survey showed visuals were used for song lyrics (92 per cent), announcements, sermon points, and Scripture readings (75 per cent).

But increasingly, Reed wrote, "pastors are including visual elements in their services and sermons that communicate more than simple words on screen: photographic images (70 per cent), movie and TV clips related to the service (53 per cent), video segments produced in-house (43 per cent), and artistic images (34 per cent)."

The new trend in visualcy has galvanised church staff to become creative in making videos for show on Sunday mornings.

visual culture in smaller churches

Predictably, the smaller churches and the strongly liturgical churches have embraced the new visual culture in a lesser way. Citing the small usage of video and lighting technologies, Mr. Reed reported:

48 per cent of churches with attendances of 100 persons used no video or lighting technologies.

11 per cent of churches with attendances of 500 reported used no video or lighting technologies.

56 per cent of liturgical churches used no video and lighting technologies.

But the gaps are not as great as they once were, Reed reported. "Half of the smallest churches are using more technology now than they did three years ago. And while half of contemporary/blended services use more visual elements now than three years ago, one-third of liturgical/traditional services also reported increases."

There is emerging in the United States a new job function called the 'media pastor', whose job it is to secure and ensure top quality visuals at worship services. In some churches, Mr. Reed reported, videos are replacing live ministry of drama groups. But in 72 per cent of the congregations surveyed, worship-related technologies are operated by volunteers. Yet the media arm of churches are on the incline. The survey showed that in half of the churches, a congregation of at least 500 persons will usually have a cadre of paid audio-visual technologists.

With the growth in visual expectations of congregants, there is a new demand being made on pastors. Reed puts it this way: "The implication for pastors in churches of all sizes is this: If you aren't involved in the development of your church's multimedia, you should be. Eager, often young, media whizzes have the skills, but they need guidance. Without it, your sermon may be at odds with its purported visual support, and your worship service will be sending mixed messages.

prophets of movement

The movement towards embracing visual technologies is not without its prophets who have been issuing warnings. One such is Bishop Will Willimon, of the United Methodist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Writing in the same edition of Leadership, the bishop points out in an article called 'Power Pointless' that preaching is inherently a sharing of the mystery of God's revelation of Himself. He warns that technology can serve to dilute the communication of this mystery. Religion, he said, can become a technique for getting what 'I want' rather than what 'God wants'. "In this environment, preaching is merely a product to be consumed. Packaging is everything, and the best Powerpoint Preacher is the one who cuts through all that irrelevant, archaic scriptural packaging and pointless, unprincipled biblical diversions, boiling everything down to The Point: the practical advice.

"The result is almost unavoidably a gospel that is privatised, trivialised, and reduced to a memo that allows everyone to say 'I got it' without moral transformation or inculcation into a community that has, as one of its major tasks, our indoctrination into the rigours of faithful Christian listening (i.e. prayers) … The biblical gospel is more a matter of 'It got me' than 'I got it'.

"The goal of truly biblical preaching," he continued, "is personal and relational rather than a set of manageable bullet points on a screen."

Another cautionary voice in the latest edition of Leadership is recorded in an interview with Rev. Leith Anderson, pastor of a Minnesota church and author of Leadership That Works.

Pastor Anderson said trouble comes about when one is so enamoured with a sermon illustration - whether verbal or video - that one uses it even though it clearly does not effectively make the point the Bible is making. "As preachers," he said, "we need to be driven by the truth of the Word of God and not by the technology or the cleverness of the story."

Send feedback to mark.dawes@gleanerjm.com.