Video Venues... follow up 3

(ed note:I "unpublished" and then reworked this for tone...)
Dave asked:
what if church plants had pastors but used videos of other preachers because:
3. they decided that there are very gifted preachers in the body of Christ and they wanted to learn from those diverse voices as well.

Ahh.. see, now, now you are getting tricky! Using all kinds of good "emergent" sounding words like "diverse"! :)

But again, I think Video Venues actually work in the exact opposite direction of what you are saying here.

It seems as though the Video Venue you have in mind is one where there's a rotation- a community hearing the best taped/broadcast messages from all over, rotating different communicators.
While I'm sure it exists, I've never seen/heard of it. The model we seem to be processing here is one where a single communicator is the one who is (mainly) speaking to the people via the video. (Other pastors may speak, just as in any church, but there's a main teacher).

If I thought videos were a viable long-term solution, your model would be the best. But I have a feeling it's not even on the table. What we're talking about in these satellite campuses, which started as overflow rooms, morphed to overflow buildings and are now complete overflow capuses, sometimes hours away from the main campus, is, in a very real sense, (please excuse the term) franchising.

So, a little thought experiment.

Let's say YourTown Community Church decided to set up a satellite campus an hour and a half from their main campus, showing video of their main guy every week. Now let's say that because of the top quality music and kids programs, YourTown West™ really grew... but it's in a different town, with different kinds of people, people who have heard of YourTown's Teaching Dude, who may even have driven the hour and a half to hear him on special occasions, but don't really have a relationship to him as pastor. And now let's say that YourTown West™ decides that they would like to do a rotation. They are fine with the Dude's teaching and want to keep including him, say every few months, but since there are so many good preaching resources available on video, why not have Bill Hybels speak at YourTown West™ one Sunday, Rick Warren the next, Erwin McManus the next and so forth.

How well would that go over? With the mother church, I mean.

But that thought experiment is more of a tangent than anything...

Here's what I want to see from the church- more pastors/teachers and not less. Video Venues get us less because more and more local churches will be feeding on steady diet of communication from elsewhere rather than developing the teachers among them. Where does a man or woman who feels called to preach get practical experience if their local church is a video venue?

Your question, "they decided that there are very gifted preachers in the body of Christ and they wanted to learn from those diverse voices as well" is the exact reason why Video Venues are a bad idea, I think.

Comments/follow up/pushback?

Comments

[rick]

hi, bob - this is sounding very slice-like, imho. i want to go to all the "ec" answers of how you haven't tried it, if its not for you then try something else, etc. but it remains that this type of setup is working in various places. i'll agree that anyone who wants to pattern themselves as a video venue - or after evergreen or imago dei or mars hill or whatever - without making the effort to allow it to be organic to their community and situation will be faddishly out-of-sync. but it's working here, for many of the reasons you've shot down as "having no chance".

it's the "this can't work" versus "i don't think this is a good idea" that's frustrating. i think this works where you'd want it to, and has more pros than cons at this point in the experiment.

but that's just me. slice on :)

[rick]

whoops - you've got an open italics tag somewhere in your post, pastor bob.

[bob hyatt]

Seriously... I'm sorry if I come across offensively. I struggle when writing editorially not to unleash the big guns of sarcasm and rhetoric. I'm trying with the tone... It's just hard to talk about something that someone is already doing, seeing good results from, and argue that it's not the best thing for the church in the long run, and do it just right.
But I'm trying to be nice!

But comparing me to Slice? Whoa! That's low, brutha! :)

There are two separate questions in "this can't work" vs "I don't think this is a good idea."
The thing is, there's a little of both mixed in here, depending on what we're talking about.
Can video venues work? Absolutely. Can people worship God, come to know Christ, fulfill the purposes of the church? Yes, yes and mostly.
I think there are certain things, certain purposes of the church that get hindered here, certain indispensible things like training up teachers/preachers... That's not strictly a Video Venue thing though. That's an evangelical, large church issue that the video venues share. Our Fundamentalist brothers do a bang up job of giving people the chance to develop their preaching/teaching gifts. We should do at least as well, and the "it doesn't work" part of this particular blog entry deals more with that aspect.
Part of what I see my mission in life and our mission as evergreen is to plant churches. Part of that is training pastors... I want to give those men or women the broad experience they need, including pulpit experience... I'm just concerned that Video Venues work against that. Though it kind of takes it to a logical absurdity, I thought this was a good question.

Perhaps I should be asking more questions and making less dogmatic pronouncements...

[rick]

not "offensive" in the slice since, but knew that would get someone's attention :). i appreciate the pushing back and forth, but there seemed to be no budge towards more of a middling ground, you know?

"training of teachers/pastors" i think can happen in a small group framework - does it work? i don't know in the large scale. is that as important as you've stated? maybe, and it's definitely something to chew on.

i'll retract my slice comment ;) - don't make me go there again!! aaaahhhhhyyyyy.

[bob hyatt]

Well, tell me what the middle ground is here, and I'll tell you if I can follow you there!

But then again, I don't know if that's the purpose, you know?
I mean, I know that God can and does work through all kinds of crazy forms of churches, even ones that meet in a pub for pete's sake... the question I' wrestling with is long term health, and as you say (and as I said in another entry recently about our thing... "we'll see- ask me again in ten years."

I feel like this is a debate (in the best sense of the word) as opposed to a meeting of the minds or coming to an common understanding. It's more like I've said "Resolved: Video Venues are unhealthy for the Church in the long term."
And others are saying "Resolved: Video Venues are a valuable and legitimate form of church that God can and does use."

The problem is that one is not necessarily the opposite of the the other. These two resolutions could both be true, couldn't they?

[david]

hey bob, i think one question that you could answer that may help shape a "middle ground" answer is:

"is 'organic' the only way to do church?"

if it is, you're right. if it is only "a way", then we need to look at the video venues and see what is "right" about them. i think it was andrew jones i read talking about finding highest commond denominator instead of lowest...

the metaphor i've been using at Calvary for a while is one of garge vs. meadow. is it organizational or organic? we discuss the positives and negatives of both, and then talk about how to be a greenhouse. organic, but organized.

maybe there are things the video venues can learn from evergreen to be better, and things evergreen can learn from video venues...

and i thought you did a good job with your tone on this one.

[bob hyatt]

Really good question...
Only?
No.

Best?

hmmmmm...

I think so.

But before anyone jumps on me, don't we all think that the way we are doing it (unles we are stuck in ministry somehwere we don't want to be) is the best way to do it? Otherwise, we'd be doing it differently!

My contention is that: [soapbox]an organic, local, community centered approach to church is the best [/soapbox]

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it! At least for now. Like I said, it yet remains to be seen if what I am conceiving as "organic" works in the long run.

[ScottB]

You know, this whole line of reasoning assumes a particular understanding of the definition of preaching and its purpose in the community. If the preacher's purpose is to deliver content - teach doctrine and whatnot - then, in some sense, the comment that Bob linked to earlier isn't really all that absurd. We'd want the best content deliverer possible, so why not use video?

Personally, I don't think that's the purpose of preaching. I think it's more narrative, more about connecting the story of the community to the Story of God. It requires that, of course, the preacher know the Story of God, be that doctrine or narrative or whatever. But it also requires the preacher to know the story of the community. At what point in a structure using video does the preacher get too far away from the community's story to be able to articulate its journey faithfully? I think the danger is quite high that preaching in this format would devolve into depersonalized content delivery instead of being a voice of the community.

[rick]

now my head hurts :) - but in a good way. can i back up to the debate metaphor? your stance is "Resolved: Video Venues are unhealthy for the Church in the long term" - the other side of a proper debate isn't to totally opposite-ize the former statement, just to disprove it. so opposing view would be "Video venues are not necessarily unhealthy for the church in the long term" - and you're right, if it wasn't working for me at this time/place, i'd be somewhere else.

[david]

i have to disagree with your "best" statement.

i constantly say to people in our church "this isn't the only way to do it, this isn't even probably the best way, but it is our way."

we don't do ministry in a vaccuum, so "best" is a tricky word. we have to weigh the theoretical best against the context and come away with a less than best theoretically which is best in actuality...

i'm not sure that made any sense.

all that to say, just because organic is best for evergreen doesn't mean video venues are necessarily unhealthy for a "theoretical" mega-church in south carolina, right?

especially if the people preaching on those videos are in regular touch with the pastors of the video venues so that they can be certain to weave appropriate content into their sermon...? theoretically?

[bob hyatt]

It's not very postmodern to assert that one model should be privileged over another, is it? And I know what you are saying, and in fact I say the same thing, quite often, to our community.

But here on the blog when we're kicking stuff around? When I say it to my community, I'm more referencing the way we work all that out, the way we flesh out the philosophy... but I definitely feel that there are certain philosophical ways to approach doing church that are better than others...
Here on the blog, especially, I'm gonna go ahead and assert things, even things that I may be arguing just to help me work out what I think and feel.

To me, "organic" is a broad enough concept that it could include a lot of things, even video!

So when I say it is "best" what I mean is this-

I think it's better for a community to have a say in how things shake out for them. I can say (confidently... I think) that a hard hierarchical leadership in the church is not good, not best. You'd probably agree with me. One person calling all the shots is not the best model, right?

But who are we to tell Pastor Highwater that the way he leads the Independant Baptist Temple down the street with an iron fist is not the best? :P

But we do.

I'm trying to talk generalities. I don't think any one "mega-church" is an illegitimate expression of church (except Joel Osteen's)... but I can say that my sense is that mega churches as a whole are not a positive development within Christendom.

Same thing with Video Venues, specifically (and we haven't talked too much about this aspect yet) the "8 Different Venues in one location!" kind. Having a mall where people can choose between cowboy worship, hula worship, hard rock worship...
That freaks me out.

I guess I want to assert (and allow people to disagree with me) that smaller is better, having the locus of vision and ministry philosophy and leadership decisions being local is best, and having teachers who are connected to the people relationally is best.