Slaves to the new technology

Week beginning 25 April 2004

Some years ago I attended and contributed to a symposium on the theme of 'worship'. It was apparent then, and still is, that the most basic function of the church -- to gather for the worship of God -- is a controversial issue, and the phrase 'worship wars' is current in evangelical circles (rivalling the phrase 'translation wars').

At one end of the spectrum there are churches like my own, which are committed to a minimalist, Word-based liturgy, every element of which is both materially and substantially derived from the Scriptures. At the other are churches which are into a much more complex worship style, complete with all the latest musical instrumentation and technology.

One contributor to the symposium made a very important point. Does our stewardship of church finances justify the costs incurred in buying the latest musical instrumentation or technological wizardry? It is, after all, not cheap to buy a guitar, or a keyboard, or a set of drums (nor, as I have discovered, a melodeon, or accordion, or mandolin...); yet churches which are committed to a worship style which involves musical instrumentation have no option but to obtain high quality gear. Add the cost of high quality public address and sound management systems, and congregations soon discover that a large part of their budget is swallowed up before one note is sung.

Of course, it may be argued that if a church is committed to having praise bands, then the best quality of instruments is desirable for the worship of God. But is that really what God intended us to do with our resources? Is it not interesting that the New Testament is remarkably silent on the matter of musical instruments and insistent that the best melody is that of the heart? There is much to be said in the New Testament about bestowing our goods to feed the poor and on distributing to the necessity of the saints, but little on spending a fortune on the best range of guitars and drum kits.

But there is another aspect to this that concerns me even more. The situation now is such that -- quite apart from the musicalisation of our worship and the issues that raises -- churches are becoming more and more enslaved to the progress of the new technology. That has both advantages and dangers.

There is no doubt that the new science makes for skilful and slick presentation. To listen to an informative lecture accompanied by Power Point technology is beguiling and entertaining. Whether it improves information retention is another question, of course.

But, increasingly, I notice that many of our visiting missionary speakers, for example, now come to us equipped with laptop, projector, screen and loudspeaker. The old circular slide-carousel -- the most entertaining part of which was seeing missionaries upside down, or blank screens where pictures should be -- has given way to hi-tech shows, complete with movement and dialogue. Missionary speakers no longer show slides -- they give presentations.

And churches need to be careful. To give permission for the showing of slides can result, as I discovered recently, in computer-generated presentations with music or singing which ordinarily might have no part in a church's worship. For the purposes of imparting information, it is no compromise of a church's position to watch such a presentation, but I question whether it is necessary either.

I am no devotee of gizmos and gadgets; I enjoy the benefits of a mobile phone, but I can do without a palm-top computer. I go on holiday to get away from e-mails, not to access them from a remote location with sophisticated software. And I refuse to sell to the idea that communicating the message of the gospel requires investing in expensive machinery or hi-tech equipment.

Unfortunately there are many who believe that faith comes by seeing, watching and observing. Many have bought the idea that the church's way of doing things needs to be every bit as good as the world's. As a consequence, ministry, or, for that matter, any aspect of communication in the church's life, has become dependent on the new machinery. Instead of being a means to an end, it has become an end in itself. Though we speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not a laptop or a digital projector, we have become like tinkling cymbals.

I recall an advert that appeared in the Evangelical Times some months back, in which church services were advertised, accompanied with the boast that the worship used the Authorised Version and used no public address system. I am not sure of the merits of either claim. Even an orthodox Calvinistic church like Back uses a modicum of technology to make the preacher audible and record his sermons -- good or bad -- for posterity.

But it is time we ditched the idea that to communicate well to a modern audience requires us to be in the know about processing information digitally or skilled at handling electronic machinery. If all a presentation does is show pictures and play music, then the contribution to the imparting of information is minimal. If all we do is display bullet point headings, then it is questionable whether the money required to pay for the gadgetry is any more justified than that spent on the latest musical instruments.

No. God did not send us with the world's weapons of warfare. He simply commissioned us to preach the Gospel. The most powerful sermon I ever heard was a tape recording of Lloyd-Jones. The fact that it was recorded shows that a certain amount of technology is no bad thing; but I keep returning to the fact that Lloyd-Jones achieved more without any technology than our modern church achieves with it.

After all, what is the point of ensuring that the wrapping is silk if the box is empty inside? Perhaps we have concentrated so much on ways to communicate our message that neither we -- nor others -- are very sure any more what our message actually is.