[quote author="John sandeman"]Do we just video the talk we would have given anyway? or should the form of the sermon vary because of the medium? Here’s how one Episcopalian minister is experimenting with a sermon mash-up style.
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=FatherMatthew
You might start with his diversity sermon. Warning for those who only like seeing stuff they agree with: extremely Liberal theology

John,

I think this is a great idea. Each media has its own perculiarities which presents both difficulties and opportunities for the gospel.  I think that we need to work out ways to leverage off the opportunities and reduce the difficulties.

So what does the internet offer us that, say, TV doesn’t? How does that change the way we package the gospel? Maybe the “sermon” or the “bible study” are not the right models?

I think Internet lends itself to bite size packets of information that can be linked together in multiple ways that allow the user to drill down to follow as they please. How an we use this for the gospel that we have traditionally taught in a logical progression?

Any thoughts?

Everyone is still learning the net. When we are up to web.140 I might be able to say what is going on. We can learn some lessons from TV, though - the Anglican Media Sex series worked because it respected the conventions of the medium. TV sermons - using a talking head single camera approach - don’t work. It is the post production that will make the difference to material that starts out as a straight talk.
For example, Introducing God owes a lot to the Total Visual Solutions/Anglican Media people for giving it a good look and feel. If it were to be recorded today I am sure Dominic would go even further in exploring the medium.
Fr Matthew on the other hand has crafted his talk to work in front of the camera. Take away the camera and it would not work.
It is clever stuff.
Is it still a sermon? Is it still preaching? I think it is, but don’t take my word for it.
I think the Fr Matt stuff has a logical flow to it, but he doesnt display it. At that point I think you may be asking the wrong question., or partly the wrong question. There is an issue of modern and post-modern methods of discourse here, but how that relates to media is very complicated. News is still news on the net - or is it?
Your point about the internet as series of links to information the user can drill down on gives rise to a wry thought. The Bible with its range of voices and authorial styles and genre is a bit net like. The fact that it is not smoothed out like the Koran is, might be appealing to net people, and a positive virtue in the new culture.

On the potential benefits of using the audio internet resources… maybe this simple proposal document I wrote quite sometime ago might be useful… (it’s by no means comprehensive)

http://www.causeway-online.info/repository/resources/causeway_complete.pdf

But from my experience over the last 3 years running a small scale project for distributing audio material I’d have to say the big benefit is seeing users from all over the world coming to the site (thanks to google analytics).  My guess is that what is true for audio is probably true for video.

[quote author="John sandeman"]Everyone is still learning the net.

Not only that, it is changing rapidly as well. But I don’t think we need to wait till we know it before we get onto it. Get onto it now and experiment.
It is a relatively easy medium to publish in and so lends itself more to experimentation than TV or print. Over time models (note the plural) of ministry to different audiences will emerge.

Admitedly producing good video/audio is still a time/resource consuming process but I wonder if the experience of YouTube shows us that the content rather than the product quality is what is attracting people?

I also would love to find creative people to experiment with producing material that an be used virally and throwing out there and seeing what happens.

There is an issue of modern and post-modern methods of discourse here, but how that relates to media is very complicated. News is still news on the net - or is it?

I’m still trying to come to terms with this and a forum such as this has helped me understand more.

I suppose my question about form/model is really about how people choose to learn or choose to be persuaded to believe something. Advertisers and politicians certainly seem to think that image is what counts rather than a sound argument. Is this general trend? Could we or should we use a similar approach in pre-evangelism or evangelism? Or are we bound to always present an argument?

I’m not advocating that we get rid of logic and sound argument completely because at some stage we need to know the whys of our faith. But is the modern person attracted to the sound logic of a proposition or something else?

Your point about the internet as series of links to information the user can drill down on gives rise to a wry thought. The Bible with its range of voices and authorial styles and genre is a bit net like. The fact that it is not smoothed out like the Koran is, might be appealing to net people, and a positive virtue in the new culture.

What an interesting thought. It would be a BIG project.

The future is social networking , says I at least :P

[quote author="Jeremy Halcrow"]A question for Dave Horne.

I’m still not 100% clear on why we can’t have e-church if online we can:

1. Meet around God’s word regularly with the same people.
2. Listen to God’s Word being exegeted
3. Fellowship and pray with this regular group.
4. Love and support the members of this group

OK sacraments are a bit tougher

I guess it comes back to your ecclesiology - so I’d love to tease this out further…

I’m not David, but I’ve been thinking a bit about this over the last couple of days.

Surely if not from personal experience, definately from Paul’s letters we can see that there is an intrinsic value in human closeness.

Paul himself was in a situation not too dissimilar from ours, in terms of seperation from the people He loved and cared for, and being forced to compromise for a form of media to communicate, eg His letters to the various churches, rather than being physically present which he longed for.

Take a look at the end of Phillipians 2 for example. Say from about verse 23 on.

This is a recurring theme in Paul’s letters, and I think is quite relevant to this discussion, at least to chew over.

Hi all

David asked must we always present an arguement
well the greatest arguement I have seen is peoples lives
something that the net does not present

I wonder if the sense of relating and the power of relating is lessened when you divorce it from physicallity, the apostle Paul longed to be with them, I think maybe he knew the importance of “gathering”

sean

Great essay Luke.

Most of the arguments I’ve seen against the church using social networking are a bit ‘Amish’.. ie Jesus got around on a donkey, thus so should we..

However something it also does - is that it flattens hierarchies and democratises opinions. I think this is what troubles church leadership. How do we know who has the authority to teach and lead? This issue of ‘authority’ is the one that needs to be unpicked for chuches to embrace social networking.

Just a thought out of left field…

I wonder if the practice of the Internet lends itself to a tendency to promote gnosticism - a denial of the physical world and a disproportionate value placed on the ephemeral world of cyberspace.

Jeremy wrote:
I’m still not 100% clear on why we can’t have e-church if online we can:

1. Meet around God’s word regularly with the same people.
2. Listen to God’s Word being exegeted
3. Fellowship and pray with this regular group.
4. Love and support the members of this group

OK sacraments are a bit tougher

It seems to me that with the current normal internet capabilities,
you would also lack:

a) the encouragement of praising God together in song;

b) the love and support expressed by appropriate physical nearness and touch;

c) the shepherds’ (pastoral) ability to see those who are struggling with spiritual, physical or mental health issues but dont willingly admit it, and the ability to care for them practically;

d) the ability to use multiple points of contact to lovingly seek out those who drift away from meeting together;

Another point maybe access..  access to machines and internet access isn’t ubiquitous so e-churches only service a particular demographic.

Most of the specific things that have been mentioned in this thread have been related to publicising the presence of churches in the community and making material available over distance.

Anyone got any thoughts about what the future church looks like in terms of the one that physically meets together (I’m assuming that we all agree that they will continue)

One idea I’ve played around with is the idea of take-away resources.  When attending church in London (quite a few years ago) it was possible after the service to have a coffee and goto the tape library and pick up a copy of the sermon that you had just heard thanks to the high speed copying machine that they had on-site.  This allowed members of the church to listen again to sermons during the week, to think, apply and prepare for the next week.

I wonder if recording sermons straight to hard disk and having a couple of machines at the back of the church which members can hook up their MP3 player of choice to and upload a copy of the sermon.  It could be FREE and it would be rapid and could also expose the entire digital catalogue to anyone who wants to get it.

And rather than being a church replacement-- it’s using new tools in the existing environment.

Hi there,

Well, here it is, my very first sydneyanglicans.net.au post. My apologies for joining in so late!

I work in educational technology, and this question of online ‘community’ comes up there too. What I’ve gathered from my study and experience is that technology is great for creating weak links, or maintaining strong ones. A generalisation, I know, but I find it helpful. I find it a helpful synthesis between the two polar positions out there:
1. Technology will bring people together, make distance irrelevant, bring world peace by transcending differences (cue example of members of two conflicting ethnic groups emailing each other); or
2. Technology cannot (and should not) be used to create any kind of relating or community - ‘it’s just not the same’.

Perhaps a ‘retrieval ethic’ is helpful here. Paul hadn’t ever been to visit the Roman church, but he happily wrote to them. Yet, he longed to see them, to strengthen their relationship. Again, he used letters to maintain the strong link he had with the churches he got started.

I’ve found Steve Talbott very helpful in thinking through technology, here are some of his posts on ‘community’:
http://netfuture.org/inx_topical_all.html#Community--virtual_and_otherwise

One of the key points is that technologies have an inherent ‘bias’ or ‘affordance’ that, if we’re not careful, can draw us to think in a particular way. For example, the internet affords easy, cheap, and fast transfer of information, which is wonderful. But, in the education field, we may end up thinking of education and learning as *just* the simple transfer of information from one point to another.

So perhaps a key question is what are the key affordances of the technologies we’re thinking of for church, and how could they mislead us into unbiblical thinking about church?

I also totally agree with John on:

John Sandeman - 04 May 2007 09:01 PM

Everyone is still learning the net. When we are up to web.140 I might be able to say what is going on. We can learn some lessons from TV, though - the Anglican Media Sex series worked because it respected the conventions of the medium. TV sermons - using a talking head single camera approach - don’t work. It is the post production that will make the difference to material that starts out as a straight talk.

I think this applies particularly to podcasting. I reckon the real power of podcasting is beyond just re-purposing existing content (ie sermons) - great as this is - and produce new content designed for podcast. This was a pattern when the web came out, companies would just re-deliver existing content to it, which is fair ‘nuff, but with the new technologies the real exciting stuff is working out what *new* stuff you can do. So I would add, as well as post production, that we could look at producing new content from scratch for the new medium. For example, how about some kind of podcast ‘soapie’ (audio with still photos?) to communicate the gospel within a narrative format? (Just a crazy thought)

I’m also very interested in the potential role of educational technology in theological education, and would be happy to hear of anyone out there with similar interests! =] (perhaps privately if off-topic)

Cheers,
Marty