What do you think? Good, bad, ugly, right, wrong?
I’m going to reserve my thoughts for a later post, but want to see what people are thinking…!
[HT: Dewde]
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What do you think? Good, bad, ugly, right, wrong?
I’m going to reserve my thoughts for a later post, but want to see what people are thinking…!
[HT: Dewde]
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[…] (Video HT: COLLIDE >> ChurchCrunch) […]
Adam_S says
I have been put off by several of Shane Hipps comments recently. Knowing he is a Mennonite pastor does help to explain things a bit. (Nothing against Mennonites, I have actually thought about joining a Mennonite church, but there does tend to be a distrust of the world among Mennonites.) I agree that we cannot trust technology for all things. I know that how we communicate affects what we communicate. But I just cannot agree with his statement that the method is the message. If he wants to take that back to scripture and the sermon and gospel presentation then how is the gospel affected by it being shared through a sermon? How about the fact that scripture is in a written form when about 1 billion people ages 15 or above are illiterate and about another 1 billion cannot read at a high enough rate to understand most translations.
Now this is obviously cut and there is probably more that would explain those those better. But I would have to say in response to his "the Medium is the Message" that "Content is King". Gospel has to power to break through the medium and quite often the way we wrap up the gospel is very unattractive, but it still can touch people, because it is the Holy Spirit that is the one that does the heart change. That does not excuse our responsibility for bad communication of the gospel, but it does mean that we are not more powerful than the Holy Spirit.
Another issue with the beginning of the clip when he says that advertising shapes and molds people and that the rest of us don't know that–if that is how Ad people think then no wonder some of those that I know are so ego driven. That by itself seems to break his argument for me. Either Ad people aren't really smart enough to mold people, or they are smart enough to mold people (but people are smart enough to know that they are being molded). Ad people cannot be smarter than everyone else in the world. Just doesn't work that way.
I very much agree that we should think through our uses of media, that we should think deeply about the implications of the gospel in our culture, and that we as individuals living out the gospel are the most important communication tool. The rest of his comments I have to take issue with.
johndyer says
As a seminary student, as one who has read both of Hipps' books, and as a web coder, I know I could come up with lots of little critiques here and there.
However, by and large, I think Hipps is really on to something important.
Also, it's worth nothing that a lot of the phrases from McLuhan like "the medium is the message" are meant to be "prophetic" in the sense that they are exaggerations to make a point. The feelings that you have when you hear them are the point.
Adam_S says
I haven't read his books, so I will put one on my to read list. And I agree that how we communicate is important. Clearly people say things in comments of blogs that they would not say in person and quite often those things should not be said at all. My issue is that instead of attacking the improper message, what he seems to be attacking is the medium of the message. There are instances of improper use of a medium that should be attacked, embedding a gospel presentation in a porn movie would probably be a good example. But from what I have seen (which is mostly a few blog articles and several different cut videos, so I may be way off base) his attack is way too broad or not broad enough.
Either we need to really attack all medium (older modern forms of communication and exclusion as well as current and future technology) or we need to agree that the medium can be a problem but the content is the primary issue. I don't want to make it too much either or, I agree that there are many issues with improper use of a medium.
Let me give an example. I used to work with an association office of a denomination. The denomination was going to provide a bunch of money for evangelism and church planting in a city. But they reserved 1/3 of the money for mass market evangelism (advertising.) At the end of the project, the advertising and the large events had almost no effect. (I was the one responsible for tracking). I could point to four people that became Christians through these means (and they spent well over $1 million dollars.) Virtually all of the results came from providing very small amounts of money to churches to have a VBS or a block party or a men's breakfast. $100 or $200 grants to small churches. Now this is how the local office wanted to spend all of the money, but we were over ruled because the national office was interested in the publicity that would come from the advertising. They didn't consider that mass media is really lousy at communicating the gospel for evangelism. But it is not that the mass media is bad for the church to use, but that their use of it was wrong based on their stated purpose. According to the project he only purpose was evangelism and church planting and those were the only two evaluation points.
I personally think that mass media is not good for communicating gospel because there is not enough interaction. So I find it odd that so many people want to celebrate a Billy Graham sermon or movie on the one hand but want to say that the more personal interaction of facebook or twitter is somehow wrong.
Sorry for the rant.
Jim says
In a recent discussion with my boss http://tinyurl.com/9wf7y8, he stated that he is concerned that the medium should not drive the message of Scripture, but that God uses us to create and use vehicles. I know a lot of Mennonite folks from central CA.One of my favorite Bible commenators is DE Hiebert.
Trying to figure out if he's playing a little on the D's Advocate side?
Good stuff though, he definitely get's your attention…I want a Porsche…!