I’ve been thinking a lot about how multi-sensory our culture is…
There used to be a time when people could sit through long talks. The Lincoln-Douglas debates of the 1860 presidential race have always stood in my mind as an example of this. Lincoln & Douglas traveled around and cordially lectured on and debated politics for 8 hours at a time. People simply had the attention span or the endurance to take it.
Today, however, we don’t even have television shows where the scene last longer than a matter of seconds before changing. Most channels even have ticker tapes on the bottom or are running advertisements in the corners. The rate of sensory change that we’ve become accustomed to is lightning quick.
My point in thinking all of this through is the growing conviction that a 35 minute sermon is too much for people to handle if there isn’t some kind of change of pace or sensory change.
If we are going to be a relevant and engaging church we need to learn to communicate at a very high level and integrate as many creative and multi-sensory elements as possible.
The calling is to be a creative church.
That makes a lot of sense…I’m excited to see what kind of creativity that line of thought sparks.
Overall, you do a great job of it. I think our way of speaking helps feed the senses–history, apologetics, life experience, etc.–and I always enjoy the visuals you throw in.
I think the first question to answer is what is the goal (or purpose) of church services (on Sunday morning)? For me, the goal is not to be entertained, but to worship God. So, for me, when the multisensory presentation becomes more about the show and the razzle-dazzle, it is not worship.
I’ve often used, and still use, the phrase that a service should be about worship and not mere entertainment. I’m beginning, however, to realize that many churches hide behind this truth and do a poor job of both. The service doesn’t capture people or enable worship. I guess my conviction is that the reason we have services is that there is something we can do through planning, hard work, creativity and cooperation to help facilitate worship. If we are to do all things to the glory of God, then as pastors and staff we need to work our hardest to make the services the best they can be. The service or the creativity isn’t the end goal but rather a means to an end. And the minute we stop trying to give our best we will be giving less than our best.
Someone could have critiqued the Old Testament Tabernacle for being opulent with fine cloth and jewels. The critique would have been that the tabernacle should be about worship and not fineries. It’s a false dichotomy. If the tabernacle is about worship… then it demands our best across the board. Likewise, any church that says the service is about worship and doesn’t labor and sweat to put forward its best (week after week) either doesn’t take worship serious enough or see God as worthy enough. As the saying goes, our checkbook shows what we value.
My thoughts on attention span didn’t conclude that we stop focusing on God, preaching or communicating deep truth etc. Rather, the conclusion was that the bar for effective communication has been raised as a result of our multi-sensory culture and that a responsible church should seek to raise its bar — not to entertain, but merely to connect.
Worship demands, because God deserves, the best of what we can give…
I’ve been to those churches who proudly state that they refuse to “entertain”. I think that word is chosen by those particular individuals to make their argument seem more pious. From my experience, it is those types of service leaders who are unable to assist in drawing me into worship. Their pride and aversion to making things exciting and creative, for me, has made the services painfully dry causing me to focus more on the lack of quality and creativity (often wondering how on earth that pastor/leader even got the job) rather than being swept up into worship and focus on God. That may sound petty or unspiritual, but I think it’s just plain human and typical.
It makes me excited to be at a service that keeps me “in the moment”, where quality is everywhere you look and those who are leaders actually “lead” in worship. It seems to me, services that lack creativity and are not multi-faceted are probably planned by people who, though they are well-meaning and love the Lord, are not gifted in the right areas and don’t have the talents or skills to be planning a service that can meet the majority where they are at.
It’s a lot easier to get on a high horse about not being an entertainer than to be humble and really evaluate if one is in the right area of ministry.
It was fun reading all this :)