"I would rather have a video preacher that has the gift of preaching and can preach, then have a live preacher that can't."
I think that's a dangerous comment. A lot of people these days put too much emphasis and attention on those preachers who they say have a special "gift" for preaching like Mark Driscoll or John Piper without paying any attention to the preachers who are sound teachers but not quite as amazing as the aforementioned.
I say down with video preaching. There are some churches in the US (I don't know if Mars Hill is one) with several satellite campuses but only one minister. That's just bad. A minister is not there for his face to be seen by all 5000 of his congregants. He's there to teach, lead, guide, shepherd. He can't do that for 5000 people. Churches with so many satellite campuses need a minister for each campus so each campus is adequately looked after.
Using the technology itself is fine. It depends what you're trying to achieve with it. So say a church physically couldn't find a minister, or a minister has to be absent for some reason and they can't get their hands on a laypreacher (unlikely, considering the size of most of the churches that use video preaching) then yes using a video link to bring a message into a building that would otherwise be without one is fine. But using video preaching as a permanent replacement of a real, present person who simply might not be quite as charismatic or gifted with the use of words is not right.
"I would rather have a video preacher that has the gift of preaching and can preach, then have a live preacher that can't."
ReplyDeleteI think that's a dangerous comment. A lot of people these days put too much emphasis and attention on those preachers who they say have a special "gift" for preaching like Mark Driscoll or John Piper without paying any attention to the preachers who are sound teachers but not quite as amazing as the aforementioned.
I say down with video preaching. There are some churches in the US (I don't know if Mars Hill is one) with several satellite campuses but only one minister. That's just bad. A minister is not there for his face to be seen by all 5000 of his congregants. He's there to teach, lead, guide, shepherd. He can't do that for 5000 people. Churches with so many satellite campuses need a minister for each campus so each campus is adequately looked after.
Using the technology itself is fine. It depends what you're trying to achieve with it. So say a church physically couldn't find a minister, or a minister has to be absent for some reason and they can't get their hands on a laypreacher (unlikely, considering the size of most of the churches that use video preaching) then yes using a video link to bring a message into a building that would otherwise be without one is fine. But using video preaching as a permanent replacement of a real, present person who simply might not be quite as charismatic or gifted with the use of words is not right.