Our Worship Committee is considering getting a screen for video projection for our worship services. People who are interested in this cite a number of purposes for it — to project words to hymns and songs so that people don’t have their heads buried in books; to show video clips produced by the Mission and Service Fund; to add a more visual dimension to the worship services.
This fall, I’ll be offering a course based on Quentin Schultze‘s book, High Tech Worship? Using Presentational Technologies Wisely . I like his approach. He’s not opposed to the use of ‘presentational technologies’ in worship. He just wants whatever technology we adopt to be used in the service of worship and community. That’s a real challenge, since the nature of technology is to bend everything else to its needs and demands. When a congregation puts a video screen into a worship space, it is introducing a pretty invasive piece of technology. The screen can become the centre of the congregation’s focus. Because it needs to be placed in such a way that everyone can see it, care must be taken so that it does not obscure the main symbols of worship — the communion table, the baptismal font, the pulpit, the cross.
The issue is something similar to what happened when pipe organs were introduced into worship services. In many sanctuaries, what dominates visually are the organ pipes and the choir. I don’t imagine that the original intention was to take over the worship space, but that has often been the effect. I wonder what difference it makes in the spiritual formation of a congregation when the visual field is dominated by that kind of technology, rather than by the core symbols of table, bath and pulpit? I have no doubt that it does shape us.
Before the screen goes up
August 31, 2010 by Christine Jerrett
“…to be used in the service of worship and community”
That’s realy key to all we do, even preaching. Thanks for that reminder. I think we need it often.
The problem with Hymns, songs and Bible readings projected onto a screen is that it takes valuable resources (hymn books, song books and Bibles) out of the hands of the people and and places them into the hands of those who manage the technology. I wonder how that shapes us?
Thanks for the link to the book and the Calvin Institute. There are some exciting challenges here.
I hadn’t thought about the ways in which presentational technologies can disenfranchise people. Strange, that churches would do that at a time when people want more participation, not less.