Preaching by video

So, most of the sermons at Mars Hill church are presented by (live) video. That's of interest to me: I've often wondered how we would "do" church differently if the apostles, or the reformers (or any other era that's had a big impact on how we conceive of what we do) had had access to modern media.

If the objective of the sermon is to teach the Word (as most churches from the somewhat reformed rightwards tend to say it is), then it seems peculiar that, today, we have pastors, lay preachers, and others spending hours preparing sermons for themselves. Some are much more gifted and insightful than others; and some are simply much better communicators: why not have videos of them preaching, teaching, and admonishing, rather than one of us stumbling through our own particular thoughts? You can make a classical evangelical argument out of that: spiritual gifts are given, surely, to the whole church. Modern media means that there really doesn't have to be a one-to-one mapping between gifted preachers and local fellowships.

I see a number of counter-arguments:

1. The "sermon" isn't really just about teaching the word (or the Word). It's about the formation of the community. It's about deepening the speaker's own spiritual life. It's about addressing the issues germaine to the moment, in the community.
2. Educational establishments are widely giving up on traditional lectures, finding them to be one of the least effective ways to teach anyone anything, and (with notable exceptions) have not found video a terribly effective substitute. What lesson for the church?
3. Why get together to watch a video?: we can do that better in the comfort of our own homes. Indeed, watching Driscoll on the big screen is rather like watching the God channel (though I confess he's better than most of the programmes on the there). You can view the video for yourself on the church web site. That is part of the bigger question about why come together at all. What is church for?
   
4. There is a huge danger in being attendant upon every word of a man (hey, it's Driscoll I have in mind; no danger of it being a woman in Mars Hill's case) at a distance. I come from a tradition with a deep fear of a "one-man ministry": often a source of eccentricity, heterodoxy, eventually out-and-out manipulation. That's what would worry me most about the set-up at Mars Hill, actually, but in the more general case, this is the most easily answered: the local leadership could select videos from all sorts of different preachers, and thereby gain really rather a balanced view.

Re-imagining our time together as a church fellowship seems terribly important for the present times. The world has changed so much from the era when everyone knew their neighbours, would walk with them to a large local church building, and sit together to receive the word (and sacrament...). We have much less need of large buildings these days, and much more need of community. Much less time, perhaps in a "service", and much more time serving each other and those around. This is not to say that the disciplines of spiritual formation are not needed today - perhaps they are, more than ever - but the shape and form they take can be so, so different, if we allow them to, and if we take advantage of all that the modern world has to offer.