Yesterday was my first time watching a video sermon in a local church environment. In other words, not a multi-site church and one that normally doesn’t go this route.
True, we’ve been to Harvest Bible Chapel twice — over a decade ago — and missed the live sermon both times. When he was at Elgin we were at Rolling Meadows and when he was at Rolling Meadows we were at Elgin. Sigh!
It’s also true that for nearly 15 years now, we’ve tuned in regularly to North Point, Willow, Saddleback, Southeast, The Meeting House, Woodland Hills, and many others. We certainly know the experience of sitting at home and watching on the screen.
Finally, I’m also a huge fan of DVD curriculum. These are usually produced more like documentaries and can’t be compared to sermon delivery.
But this was the first time I was in a small-to-medium church environment, on a Sunday morning, watching a sermon with 70-80 other people for whom it was probably also a first at a weekend service.
I have to say this, I was a little detached. It might be because I was assisting in the music part of the service and was thinking about what we had just completed on stage, and the song which was remaining. But I also sat in the back row trying to gauge the attention reception the video was getting. People were polite, they were definitely tuned in. I don’t really know how engaged they were, but I’d love to ask to follow-up questions as to their opinions about the mode of delivery.
So here are some general observations:
Inasmuch as it depends on the preacher, the preacher needs to be a strong, dynamic communicator. They say there’s a difference between stage acting and acting for television in that stage acting is usually a bit more over-the-top. I would argue that in this case it might need to be the opposite. The speaker needs to be overflowing with his topic so that the message reaches people separated from its presentation by time and distance. In other words, the best homiletics.
Inasmuch as it depends on the technical crew, the sound needs to be highly present (not simply picking up room sound as happened here) and there needs to be a greater dependence on tighter shots (in this case the wide shot was the basic and the tighter medium close-up was the cutaway; it should have been the other way around) to create the effect of being there. Where a Biblical text is being followed, graphics indicating which verse we’re moving to is also helpful.
That said, it was a good effort. 24 hours later, I can still tell you the thrust of the message and the scripture passage used.
It should also be added this video was sent to churches whose pastors were attending the denomination’s regional conference, which means that on a practical level, if there were 75-100 pastors present from smaller churches, 75-100 churches did not need to arrange for a guest speaker, or the expense involved with booking one.
…There are to be sure other issues associated with this. One of the North Point churches posted this pro-video apologetic with Four Reasons Why Video Preaching Works in 2014. While searching for various articles opposed to the medium, I couldn’t help but notice that 3 of the top 4 Google results were from one particular Reformed website, yet there are multi-site megachurches in that tribe, though some have reverted back to full programming at the local church level.
Before hitting the button which sends this article to subscribers and the site itself, I realized we’ve also been 3 or 4 times to The Meeting House in theater locations. This means an extremely large screen which solves the problem of presence and also several times each year, the lead site pastors do the teaching themselves by design, so the congregation gets to know those people more fully. I think the fact I didn’t remember these visits when initially composing this is indicative that in those environments, the sermon-on-the-screen is a more secondary consideration.
Image: Screen in a screen — Andy Stanley uses a smaller screen for his teaching notes, while his image is projected to 7 or 8 other venues in Atlanta and on a delayed basis to affiliate churches across North America and around the world.
Thinking Out Loud 