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Editor's Note: This is the first of many articles on FaithVisuals.com that will ask the important "why?" questions. As we seek to provide the highest quality videos and training for people interested in "doing" church media better, we also want to engage in discussion about the reasons we use video to communicate the message of the gospel. We hope that these articles will cause you to stop and think, interact with one another in the comments section, and help you consider some of these crucial questions.

We can all agree that the 21st century is decidedly visual—in terms of entertainment, advertising, mass communication, and so on. Naturally, humans have become increasingly savvy in their reception of visual languages. Whereas typical tenth graders today might have an extremely difficult time deciphering the textual classics of Homer, Virgil, and Shakespeare, they likely have no problem at all decoding the complex, digital imagery of a film about the classics—say 300 or Troy.

But what does living in a visual culture mean for Christians? Should the fact that images are more important than text in today's world change our methods of communicating the gospel? Does the fact that we have endlessly evolving communication technologies and amazing new digi-design tools necessitate some sort of adaptation of the message? As much as the term "adaptation" bothers me (it's always screamed "corrupting" to me), I've come to the conclusion that yes, adaptation of our Christian message is necessary. We shouldn't adapt the message to fit different media/technologies, but we can adapt and manipulate the variables within new media/technologies to best express the message.

However, we must be very careful in our uses of new media forms. There is great potential for good in them, but only if they are understood and utilized with discretion; only if we recognize that the medium is just as crucial as the message.

All of us are ever-more-literate readers of visual texts—able to decipher the message being communicated, even when that message is shrouded in frenetic effects, hyper-digitized stylizations, and super-speedy editing that would prove nausea-inducing to our grandmas and all but unwatchable to our great-grandparents.

To be truly visual-literate, however, is to go beyond an ability to process images and "content" that is being visually communicated. This is easy. A true visual literacy contains an awareness that the message—as told in any given video, film, or slideshow—is necessarily different from that same message if it were told in a newspaper, book, or pamphlet. That is, the medium that communicates the message always changes or shapes the message itself. This is why you always hear people comparing (and complaining about) films based on books. Some argue that the film is better, some argue the other way. The unspoken heart of the debate is this fact: books and movies are completely different forms. It is a very difficult task to match a film to a book, or vice-versa—it'd be like writing a song for a symphony orchestra and then handing it over to Snoop Dogg and expecting the same musical idea to come across in his—however skillful—raps and rhymes.

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