Is this the sacristy of the future?

Photo by James M. Thresher of The Washington Post

One of the things I enjoy most about writing this blog is the capacity to illustrate my posts with a variety of images, videos and audio clips. Response from readers tells me how great an impact the visual and audio have on the written word.

I experience the impact myself when I write my weekly letter for the parish bulletin. I wish there were a way to include in that medium the illustrative elements so easy to employ here. The same is true of preaching. The written or spoken word can stand on its own and be very powerful indeed but when combined with other media, the difference in impact can be exponential.

This article in today's Globe, then, definitely caught my attention. No, I haven't any plans - not even dreams - of installing all that equipment in my church! Well, not all of it...

We currently have the technology to record on CD's everything audio in our Sunday Masses and to duplicate the recorded CD for lectors, preachers and musicians to take home for self-critique and growth in their ministries. We have the equipment, but we don't always have the personnel handy to push the buttons and make things happen from liturgy to liturgy. It's my hope that one day soon I'll be able to send a CD out with each of our ministers to the sick and homebound so that they can share some of the Word, prayer and song of the community's worship. I need to learn about podcasting and how I might share an audio of my homilies and not just the text here on my blog. Lots to learn and lots to do!

The article below reports how churches with a less formal liturgical rite might use today's technology. The ritual of the Catholic community sets some parameters here and there are boundaries that I would hope we always respect. Still, there are moments when some of what these other churches are doing would easily find a home in the worship of my tradition.

Of course in my present circumstances I preside at the Eucharist in a church whose sanctuary is dead center in the nave with about half the assembly to my left and half to my right. Directly across from me and on the other side of a fairly open space before the altar is the choir. With this floorplan, any visuals would need to emply three screens to reach all the worshippers!

I think I'd best be satisfied with better management of our CD equipment and my hopes about podcasting!

-ConcordPastor

With aid of technology, preaching to the wired
Mainline Protestants embrace new media to get out the word

NEWTON - Saying evangelicals have gotten too far ahead of mainline Protestants in the use of technology to reach out to the unchurched, a liberal Protestant seminary here is launching a new program to train future clergy in high-tech evangelization.

The seminary, Andover Newton Theological School, is joining the Massachusetts Bible Society in establishing a media center that will also coach pastors on creating better websites and podcasts, train seminarians on the liturgical uses of video, and offer material on biblical interpretation to congregations and clergy around the country...

"The conservative evangelical community has been way ahead, and the progressive community has been lagging behind," said the Rev. Nick Carter, president of Andover Newton. "Initially there was a knee-jerk reaction on the part of mainline and progressive churches - 'That's what they do' - but now there's more of a sense that maybe they've got something there..."

Andover Newton has just completed construction of a chapel that is fully wired for video and audio projection and recording... The school intends to record student preaching, both for critiques and so the students can develop video portfolios for use in applying for jobs. The school, which has students from 35 Christian denominations, plans to train seminarians and clergy in producing and editing podcasts, streaming video, and other forms of multimedia for use in churches and on the Internet.

"The old ways of communicating the Gospel, while not ineffective, at this point are not reaching more and more people who rely on 21st-century technology for their information," said the Rev. Anne Robertson, executive director of the Massachusetts Bible Society... "We are concerned about biblical literacy, or the lack thereof, and we want to be able to produce materials that will help to address that," she said...

"For this school that created the model for graduate theological education, it's time for us to break the model and do it again," Carter said. "Each generation needs to look at how we communicate the Gospel effectively, and today, if your clergy is technologically challenged, the Gospel is technologically challenged." Many theological schools have already moved in that direction. At Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, for example, there is a course on the use of technology in worship, as well as the role of religion online. That school's chapel was equipped this spring with cameras and computers so events could be broadcast...

"In certain corners of the Christian community, using screens and digital imagery and amplified music are very common and familiar and accepted without question, while in other parts there's still a lot of even theological questions about whether it's appropriate," said Mary E. Hess, a specialist in the use of technology in theological education and an associate professor of educational leadership at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn.

"Within churches that are particularly interested in reaching out . . . you see more use of screens, film clips, recorded music, and a whole host of kinds of innovation," she said. However, technology is used less in churches with deep liturgical traditions, such as Catholic and Lutheran churches and in congregations where there is concern that technology "is disembodying, that somehow these technologies separate people."

- Read the complete report by Michael Paulson in The Boston Globe, 5-28-08

(For more on this topic, see this article from The Washington Post)