This idea that you can be blind to concepts isn’t new but it is something a massively interactive and entertained populace, is all but handicapped in noticing. Does the blind person know he’s blind save for the sighted describing colour to him? All the worlds texture and sound to them, with the odd smell. “I know it’s true because it feels true.” Comes the reply of the soon to be stumbling. The elephant's leg must be a tree because it feels just like the tree that I’ve felt. Never mind where all my bananas keep going.
What does this have to do with tech in the church?
Well, what kind of microphone would you suggest for Jesus to use? You church tech types insist upon it’s ubiquity at any given chance or opposition. When a middle aged theology nerd hounds your adoption of A.I. for ministry on his unpopular blog, the humble microphone is the refuge of the worship pastor and tech bro alike. “We can’t not adopt new tech because if we don’t then we cant keep our mic’s. Where does technological restriction end, then? Are we going to stop using microphones in worship too?” And other such techno-puritanism abounds.
Well, lets play this out a bit, then. If you can’t tell me where it ends, where did the technological advancements start? You can likely Google the first use of a microphone for a church service, and likely figure out when we started using screens and projectors and moving lights and smoke machines. But what you’re about to do instead of googling is asking a GPT to do the same thing but with a bit more hallucinations and questionable amounts of reddit posts as the research data. That’s because unlike the reasonableness of assessing a microphone's use. We blindly use what ever, “tools” are given to us by the world, for ministry as often as possible. We don’t care how sordid the development of the tech is or was, only that we can use it for ministry as we define ministry. Name a technology that we wouldn’t use. How broken and evil of a past or present use of any given tech would be needed to convince you not to use that next big thing for ministry?
You think we have online video recordings from our studios (read church sanctuaries) because the gospel and evangelism demanded it? Are you sure it wasn’t the multibillion dollar industry that wants you to constantly delete your browser history? Or the other side of that coin that wants to voyeuristically know everywhere you go online, so they can market to you? Did the church figure out the social part of its media before the influencers did? Or are we trying our best to wash these tombs as white as possible in case God shows up again. Heaven knows if Jesus had a Twitter account (still not calling it X) He would have been…more…effective?
More effective that perfect Jesus?
Mic check, Mark 2:1,2. Is this thing on?
And again he entered into Capernaum, after some days; and it was noised that he was in the house. And straightway many were gathered together, insomuch that there was no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the door: and he preached the word unto them.
How could Jesus of all of the people who know everything chose a venue that would exclude people from a proper seat to view his preaching? Why didn’t he hold a second service? Man, could you imagine if he could have done multi site. Or a podcast. What we really need, like the democrats, is to get him on Rogan. Then we’ll have some traction with our online engagement. Let’s upscale that last clip so it looks sharper for Tiktok.
I could keep going…But you get the idea…I hope.
The problem with blind and optimistic tech adoption is that it often prevents a person from hearing the basis for which tech is supposed to be used for God’s will and work. When it can give you a metric to show its effectiveness, its function is often shrouded in the features of the tech itself. While we may want it to be different. The function of a microphone is to make a person louder than they could ever be without one. The same way social media makes them more famous than they ever would be. And the reason you don’t want a pastor using A.I. to juice his sermons is because like the gift of preaching, evangelism shouldn’t be offloaded to the virality of online media. When it was intended and commanded to be something a voice that can be martyred does. Not what a post that can be nerfed could do.
How many pastors would never have sway if they had to rest on gifts they do not have? Gifts found in aggregate between technologically enhanced research, technical writing helps, and a techno-optimistic views of what social media is and can do. Spurgeon might have used a mic but got as famous as any given mega church pastor without the ability to “go viral” online. That’s because he was famous, not viral, and those are different things. But now any guy with a desire to be listened to and the means to speak gets a pulpit to use as if he was meant to preach. The mic wasn’t just handed to them. It was built into modern life. Everyone has a smartphone, because everyone is expected to have a smart phone. Which is never used as a phone by the stats. It’s used for quite literally everything else. Even silently texting you in church to let you know your children aren’t discipling as well as they should in kids church. It’s a pulpit and stadium seat to any and every crowd both ways.
Do you want a blonde, redhead, something louder, something younger. Or just to be able to do what you can’t without the tech that you can no longer imagine without. Because that's where this stuff comes from. Not optimistic neutrality but sinful man incarnate.
“And they come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves; And would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple. And he taught, saying unto them, Is it not written, My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer? but ye have made it a den of thieves.”
Mark 11:15-17 KJV
How else were the religious leaders of the day supposed to make sure the way they did worship, worked. If you can’t buy an approved sacrifice how else would you ever sacrifice properly? They really needed an app for that. Or at the very least a registration landing page, so that people could reserve their doves before attending. Tithely will get a percentage, sure, but it’s in the service of the tithe, so we’re square, right? The last thing you want is new comers to the temple not knowing what to do with their wallets and where to go to do it. Heaven forbid they wander into the holy of holies, literally. There was a clear need for a technical process and even a technological solution to the logistic problems of the time. Hence why a market formed around the need. Money is a technology too, ya know. The entire nation of Israel had to atone for their sins and make sacrifices. But this Jesus guy seems to think that he knows better when it comes to worshiping God, How would he make a sacrifice?
“And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left. Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots.”
Luke 23:33-34 KJV
“And he began again to teach by the sea side: and there was gathered unto him a great multitude, so that he entered into a ship, and sat in the sea; and the whole multitude was by the sea on the land.”
Mark 4:1 KJV
Jesus flipped tables that were the embodiment of technological infiltration of worshiped owed to him. Money doesn't grow on trees, after all. So, when we ask where the reform starts and stops we have to look at things like this. Jesus also used a boat to facilitate a sermon, the same way, I know, he would use a mic if he had one. But where we miss the mark is that he would also have flipped mic stands where they would be used wrongly. He would overturn drumkits and sounds boards and wholesale hack social media accounts into pieces to the glory of the Father. Sprinkling the digital blood of them on us as a mark of our atonements.exe
And all of us would be crying out to him saying “Lord, Lord” wondering if we were actually doing his will and not doing something willful in his name. (Matthew 7:21-23) Jesus might have had a social media presence, but he definitely would be straightening out a few social media influencers. Particularly the ones who aren’t doing their ministries as apart of a local church and it’s governance. And internet famous pastors to boot. He would have live streamed it and a bunch of us with aspirations of online and technologically enabled glory would be reconsidering the podcast and post alike.
Technological reformation in the church, starts the same way the theological reformation did. By the conviction that things might not be right and the devotion to Christ and His word to figure out what went wrong. Not what works or can be made to look godly. Much of what we are doing came as readily and without warrant as the fig leaves that covered our first sinful consequences. There’s a reason you can’t imagine doing ministry without any given piece of tech, especially the new ones. It’s the same reason Adam and Eve clothed themselves with no reasons to do so but fear and shame. But alongside that reason is another who not only authorized the concept of clothing as a technology, but tied it to the very first sacrifice for sins in the Bible.
“Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them.”
Gen 3:21 KJV
Animal skins don’t grow on money trees either, so how ever animals had to die to cloth the newly naked humans, they died at the hands of God for the expense of sins against Him. And in doing so God tied his technology of clothes to his worship, unlike the fig leaf clothes which merely tied their makers to the sin they so obviously committed.
If we want to truly reform tech use in the church, then everything we use for the glory of God needs to be as tied to the nakedness of our sin and the perfection of God’s worship in the same way. How on earth could you use or make a microphone that would be as permanently tied to God’s worship as the clothes he made out of animals for the sins of humanity were? Or is it the same microphones they loft above another form of nakedness that is nothing more than sin commodified? How would you choose a spotless and unblemished social media to lay on an altar? How would you bind software like a son, waiting for God to provide a ram in a thicket?
Or has ubiquity beguiled you so well, Preacher, that you cannot imagine a world where you need not a microphone, a pulpit, a stage, software, program, or even the latest sneakers on Instagram, to do the work of your God? Are you doing the work He laid you in the world to do? Or are you using your technology to hide from Him so you can do the work when He’s not around. As if he wouldn’t come, in the cool of your days, to ask “Who told you you needed a website, Pro Presenter, and a matching set of screens for copyrighted songs? Have you partaken in something you shouldn't have?” That you were in such as state that it warranted a covering of technology to facilitate living in a world with your sin’s consequences?
Or maybe, just maybe, you’re meant not to use a boat to fish with, or even float with, but to reach as many people as would gather on the sea shore. Instead of as many people as you could gather on a sea shore. That kind of obedience would mean trusting the the conviction of the Holy Spirit for a filling of pews and views on any content you could muster. The same way Jesus did nothing more than speak what His Father told him to speak, as the houses, nets, and cups overflew.
“For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that his commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak.”
John 12:49-50 KJV
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