Topics:	Culture, From the Editor, Integrated Media, Media team, Pastor, Philosophy of Media, Staff, Visualcy
	References:	John 7:24, Colossians 1:18, Titus 2:12

We recently had the chance to chat with Shane Hipps, author of The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture (and a FaithVisuals.com consulting editor). In the first half of our discussion, we talked about the importance of discovering the ways electronic media affect our messages, and how electronic media could be misused. In this final section, we talk about what kinds of messages are well-served by electronic media, and ways churches interact with electronic media. We hope you find Hipps's insights as valuable as we did—either way, feel free to comment and discuss below.

Speaking from a specifically church-based context, what kinds of messages are well-served by video or other visual media?

Any messages that demand sustained concentration and intellectual participation or engagement are not well-suited to a video medium. For example, the kind of abstract theological reasoning found in the letters of Paul is extraordinarily difficult to express and depict in visual imagery, since video and images offer impressions and evoke emotions. So, if the content that you want to communicate demands any kind of complex reasoning, images and video will actually work against your best efforts. This is one of the reasons that in the Middle Ages, when literacy rates plummeted and the dominant means of communication was stained glass windows, Paul's letters disappeared in the church. And it wasn't until after the print revolution that Luther "re-discovered" the epistles and basically elevated them above the stories of Jesus.

The question that we have to ask as leaders in the church as we consider using video and visual media is this: Are we inadvertently facilitating the disappearance of Paul again?

On an average Sunday, what are some practical ways that you think the church can use visual media without threatening the integrity of our message?

This question is an interesting one, because embedded in the question is the assumption that there is an "integrity of a message"—I don't think there is such a thing as a pure, unadulterated message. All messages are delivered through a medium and are, therefore, invariably shaped by our choice of media. It's often said in the evangelical world that the methods can change as long as the message stays the same, and the reality is that when you change the methods you necessarily change the message.

This may sound like I'm saying "make sure you don't change the methods, so that we can keep our same message." But I don't believe there ever was an unchanging message. And I don't think this comes as a surprise to God; he has used so many different media for his messages—a burning bush, a donkey, stone tablets, and ultimately the person of Jesus Christ, which is probably the only place that the medium and the message are perfectly united. But God understood that each of these media conveyed a different message, regardless of the content:

• A burning bush, no matter what the message, may convey mystery and otherness.
• A donkey is something comical, and it's probably humiliating.
• Stone tablets convey permanence.
• And, of course, the incarnation.

This last one is probably the most powerful aspect of this whole "medium is the message" question. Now we're not just talking about bits and bytes and screens or no screens; we're talking about humans. We're saying "I am personally a medium, and I am my message." So, I can give a sermon on Sunday morning and say you should be giving your money away, but if I'm not giving my money away, that message will come through. Or if you look at someone like Ted Haggard, the kind of sexual immorality that he experienced as a medium radically compromised his message. So that's probably the first thing we should get away from: we shouldn't assume there is some kind of pure, unadulterated message. And the more we understand that, the better prepared we are for choosing our media to think, What am I really going to be conveying when I get up there to talk? And then how will that be shaped once I channel it through a particular medium?

What do you think are some of the benefits and detriments of using visual media in the context of the church or a church service?

Again, it always depends on how it's being used. The benefit of using visual media and multimedia is that, in some ways, it is an incarnational approach. And by that, I simply mean if you look at the model of Jesus, God coming to be with us, he spoke the language and understood the forms that the ancient world used to communicate and operated within those. So there's a sense of that incarnational aspect; if part of the language of the culture we live in is simply visual multimedia, then it's wise for us to find meaningful and reflective ways of using these forms.

Now, of course, there's a flipside, which can be detrimental. The detriment comes in when we fail to understand that our media choices are not simply reflecting culture; they are generating culture. Media are often generative in ways that are unintended. A big part of the reason I wrote my book was to try and help people perceive better the way that media shape us. The detriment of using video and multimedia is that it can begin to draw upon the manipulative power of visual multimedia—the emotional, the visceral. And the bottom line is anyone who's using that media is placed in a very precarious position when they're dealing with the people of God in the world. We are at an incredibly high risk of inadvertently hijacking the imagination of our people and manipulating them against their will. And it is the ultimate sign of disrespect to do that. So there's a sense in which in order to honor God at work among our people we have to be very, very careful about how we use these media because they're extraordinarily powerful.

Again, I'm not suggesting that we don't use them. I'm simply saying "Beware of the fact that you hold a nuclear weapon in your hand!" And you need to understand what the impact can be over the long term.

Another concern I have is that many video and multimedia expressions are created and then exported. It's essentially a commercial imperative that says whatever is the most emotionally evocative or hilarious or entertaining experience is going to sell. Those are the forces of market capitalism driving the creation of art. And when we transpose and interject those forces into a worship setting, which is designed to be countercultural and to call into question the dominant assumptions of our culture, those important aspects of worship become impossible to do. The setting actually tends to reinforce the very assumptions that our culture holds, which is that the chief good and the chief aim is entertainment, efficiency, and consumption.

So I would say, if you're going to use multimedia in a church, find people within your community who are passionate, gifted, and care enough to create these kinds of expressions. If they're not there, that's okay. Find other means from within the congregation. For instance, my congregation is a very intergenerational congregation, and we don't produce our own videos because no one here knows how to edit and no one here has an eye for it. Now if somebody came and had an eye for it and wanted to produce some visual media, we would absolutely include them and invite ways to do that. But that's because it comes from our congregation and speaks back into our congregation, and that's an incarnational kind of expression of multimedia. So instead, we do a lot of participatory rituals. We have a lot of artists in our congregation, and so they found ways to create rituals that connect with and are indigenous to our own community. And if someone wanted to buy the art we've created, I might let it happen, but I don't know that I would. I would certainly never go out and market it anywhere, because it was designed for our own context. And it's an incredibly unique blend, like any context is.

But do you think there are media done and sold outside of a specific indigenous church context that attain a universal context? Take The Book of Common Prayer, for example. Obviously, it had its original context within the Church of England, but it's gone all over the world and served a purpose.

Yeah, I think that's fair. I think there are those possibilities, and I admit that some of what I'm saying has to do with my own personal preferences. This isn't to say that if someone creates something, it can't be used in another context. Of course it can. But I'm just far less inclined to watch videos or to play videos in my congregation that are not designed for my context. So that's just a decision I make as a leader, but I don't know that that's a categorical imperative that I would state across the board.

I notice you're pretty careful throughout your book to always come back and say "I'm obviously not rejecting all electronic media in church; I'm just saying here are things you need to be aware of." So with that in mind, I did want to ask: Do you think the church should embrace or reject the wider culture's emphasis on images and visual media? Or is there a middle ground where it's appropriate?

I think Marshall McLuhan used this phrase: "It's like trying to resist the wind and the tides." [Ed. note: If you want to learn more about McLuhan and his four laws, check out Part 1 of our interview with Shane] I don't think the notion of rejecting technology and going Amish—and I am a Mennonite so I have close cousins in this faith community that are Amish—is incarnational. In fact, I think that goes against the very way the incarnation works. And so that's why I can't wholeheartedly reject whatever our culture is doing. That's why my main focus is:

• Seek to understand before you critique.
• Seek to understand before you reject.
• Seek to understand before you embrace.

And that last piece is what evangelicals miss all the time. They are often so concerned with asking "Can we?" or "Can't we?" And I want to say:

• Enter the messiness.
• Ask hard questions.
• Seek to understand.

After asking these questions, you may find that, in one context something is radically inappropriate, but in another it's the most beautifully moving thing ever.

This is why I'm saying I can't universally apply through every setting that certain videos or visual multimedia should never be shown. I can only tell you in my context and at this time that something might be offensive.

There's another McLuhan quote where he says, "There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what's happening." And I tend to focus on that, to say, okay, nothing here is inevitable. I can't say that electronic culture is bad or print culture is better. I think the electronic age has provided some really helpful correctives to a kind of "tyranny of the left brain." And my fear now is we are at risk of creating a "tyranny of the right brain," in an unintentional way. I like the imagery of the brain hemispheres and the way that the brain is found: a natural ecology between right and left hemisphere.

How do you respond to someone who might say, "It doesn't matter how we communicate God's truth as long as the message doesn't change"?

My response would be we need to take a lesson from McLuhan's aphorism "the medium is the message." We need to understand that the medium, regardless of our message, has as much or more power in shaping us. Another quote of McLuhan I really like that expresses this same sentiment is, "The message of any medium has about as much importance as the stenciling on the case of an atomic bomb." And the point is that the message has no real meaning when compared to the medium. I think we have a lot of history to demonstrate that this is simply true.

Check out an excerpt of Shane's book here.

Shane Hipps is pastor of Trinity Mennonite Church—a missional, urban, Anabaptist congregation in Phoenix, Ariz. Before accepting a call as a pastor, he was a strategic planner in advertising, where he worked on the multimillion dollar communications plan for Porsche. It was here that he gained expertise in understanding media and culture. Shane speaks nationally, is a contributor to Leadership Journal, host of the "Third-Way Faith" podcast on wiredparish.com, and author of The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media Shapes Faith, the Gospel, and Church.

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