Its been a while but I’ve been busy. One of the things I have been busy with is placing my church on television. And with that we are also being broadcast world wide. How did this possibly come about you say, when old line churches usually take longer than birthing children to make a decision on changing something/ It is true that churches like many non-profit organizations move slowly, more so when your entire governance in a church is all volunteer and they need to take the needs and feelings of all the members to heart. If it were a profit making organization that felt it could expand its customer base and hence it business and profitability by advertising in new electronic media, there is no question they would and do. What many churches don’t get is that they have as much mission and should be seeking as much “profit” as any other organization, just that their “business” is providing free information to all those in the world who need to hear it. Their profit is in sould saved and people taught about Christ. This supposedly was the originally mission statement of the early church and the primary goal of its founder. Over time, specially after about the 1870′s, churches thought they were like the great railroads of the time, instututions that everybody needed and would use no matter how badly the railroad barrons milked huge sums from the common people just to get their products and purchases shipped. They saw what happened with the coming of the automobile and following truck transportation. A competing new media took market away from the railroads and they lay as a poor shadow of their former selves, fit for few products that need to ship in huge weight bulk.
Churches have been very much like railroads. They havent changed much in how they go about their services, mostly the same as back in 1870. Using the same equipment, the same antiquated language and historical reference in the same way. Like the invention of the automobile changed the face of transportation and the culture of the people, it changed the way people spent their Sundays. The competition for the “Sunday drive” became a thing families could do. They could more easily visit distant relatives and friends on their one day off a week. Then the other scientific inventions added to the types of alternatives there were for people’s time, telephones, movies, the advent of television, now the computer and the internet, video gaming, entertainment on demand and over 100 simultaneous channels to watch on cable and satellite TV. The church didn’t alter their methods ,means or language, they closed ranks and tried to keep out technology and modernity from invading their stoned buttressed santuaries. Sanctuaries in which they could find sanctuary from the changing world with something that remained the same over generations and was conforting in its unchangability. It provided a feeling of safety from fear of the changes happening outside their doors. Or as someone said recently they became a religious burial club.
However God isn’t dead, and the word lives on. Brave souls hearing the call of the original mission from so long ago sought to carry the original message in the words and music of the cultural now. These are the growing churches, some even becoming mega churches because so many people hunger for the message, but only if they can understand it and it has meaning fo rtheir daily lives in the now. The hunger for the message didnt die, it went into hiding until each individual reaches a point in life where they look around to find more in life beyond themselves, look for answers to their life beyond themselves. However they wont go look into old school places for this message. If you dont get the meaning of “old school”, then you are old school and you will have objections to this change which needs to take place. The old school places and organizations lack any credibility and fail to address todays issues and engage the cultural of todays people. Todays people look for meaning in ways they understand and are culturally comfortable with.
So it is with First Church in Pittsfield. People are beginning to realize that ministering to just those aging individuals that have been inside their walls for years is not the deeper mission Jesus would want for them. Just being the great and nice people they are also doesn’t do it. Unless someone comes through your door you can’t even begin to welcome them and tell the the good news you have to share. You want to sell mattresses, cars or some new food product, you need to communicate to people that you have what they need and where to find it in an unthreatening manner – hence advertising. Churches need to go out into the community as did Jesus in his ministry and speak the good news.
So here we are in First Church doing just that. Taking to the airwaves as we did last year with the church band. Letting the community know there was something new and different happening here. Changing the way in which we worshipped (although old timers who can’t or won’t cvhange may not like it, unless this is done the churhc they knew will cease to exist in 5 years and they will be the ones to have killed it by stubbornly refusing to spread the good news to modern society in ways that society understands. You wouldn’t spread Gods message in Greek to Hindu’s. Neither should you force antiquated language most people do not use in everyday conversation to communicate the good news today. That just tells people you are elitest and snobs, and if newcomers do not understand all the learned codes and ancient language, they aren’t as good as you were anyway. Wonderful way to be welcoming and accepting. However there are enough modern cuturally thinking folks to understand what needs to be done.
So since January we have been filming the Sunday morning sermons given by a dynamic individual who truly believes that radical the hospitatily of Jesus is the way to help people. It is this message every Sunday we “tape”, edit and package to be broadcast on local television for anyone in the local community to see that First Church is doing a new thing! It is also mounted for viewing over the internet by anyone outside our immediate local community and indeed around the world. Do we show the entire service like some other churches? No. I’ve seem some local churches that do. They move so slow, sometimes not a fault, as prayer and introspection does take time and provides no action for viewers to stay tuned to for long. Most part of a live service require some form of participation and are by their nature something to be experienced not “watched”. But to capture viewers and begin to let people hear the message for themselves that they too are children of God and would be welcomed warmly by our members if they were to actually visit physiclly some Sunday is the communication we are trying provide.
Soon the internet dimension of this will be provided as our new church website is close to being unveiled. This will be another dimension of utilizing new media to reach out and share the message, it should also allow people to find us and thereby visit to see what the new thing is that is happening at First Church. In all these new media outreach opportunities it is nothing more than way Paul said to the Corinthians long ago, “I have become all things to all people that I might by all means save some” (1COR 9:9-23). Not a bad grounded philosophy. So we provide the good news of Gods grace in all ways and all media and by doing so let the community know they are welcomed here. We have already seen and heard positive results from just a few short weeks of this and look forward to meeting new friends in the pews in the coming Sundays.
