8-Track Gospel in a Ipod World

Today I spent 30 minutes in our local talk radio station 1450 WREL interacting with the host on terrorism, evil and suffering. I am not sure I qualify as a credible voice, and anybody listening may wholly agree with that point. Maybe nobody else was available. It was not particularly good or bad, but the power of media amazes me.

Everything we learn comes to us from media. You are likely reading this from a computer connected to the internet, and I posted it using my wirelessly connected computer. Not too long ago we were enamored with just receiving emails. Now blogs are the norm, and I bet our kids will laugh someday about when news papers were thrown in the driveway.

My concern is that the new media has made the church obsolete because we lost our message in the milieu of technology. In other words, we’re preaching an 8-track gospel in an ipod world.

Generation Gap

Has media warped our ability to unite generations? Follow me here! I’ve never seen, touched or used an 8-track in my life. I had to google it in order to make sure I knew what I was talking about. But many godly believers in our churches (probably none reading this article) remember the days of 8-track as if they were yesterday and stiffen at the thought of moving on. Not because they are unreasonable, but because that was the prime of their life. Armed with a search warrant we’d find boxes of 8-track tapes stored in their closets, garages and attics. There is probably another group of people who took the step from 8-track to cassette tape, but stopped with them. In both cases, the media world has passed them by. Some of us never look back to the days of rewinding VCR tape while others don’t buy DVDs because a VCR is all they know. Is this not the stalemate we find in church methodology?

Growing Pains

How exciting is it to purchase a new cell phone? I love it when the 24 month contract is coming to a close. My Treo 650 is already looking ragged. Yet my excitement wanes as I wrestle with a new keypad, reenter old addresses and setup another voicemail account. The same could go for pulling out a new Dell notebook. I would play with it all night, yet spit with angst over Microsoft Vista’s new features or incompatibility with other programs.

I believer traditional independent Baptist churches are struggling with the same fight. Because the technology explosion has taken place within our generation it becomes our responsibility to bridge the gap. Much work is needed because the greatest preachers with the most powerful sermons have no impact if the media is not delivered in a culturally appropriate form. No doubt change will be hard, dissenters will be many and some will never agree; but the alternative is irrelevance. A Gospel message being sold at the flee market, thee-for-a-dollar is no Gospel for me. I look forward to the day when grandpa and grandma start downloading the latest podcast.