“I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.”
1 Corinthians 3:2 (NIV)
I was listening to a podcast from Wisconsin Public Radio’s “To the Best of Our Knowledge” and kept thinking about what Paul wrote to the the church in Corinth.
You can listen to the pertinent portion here: Segment 1 on June 4, 2006, and read about it here: T.V. OR NOT T.V.
The basic assertion is that television has become more “intelligent” over the years. People have to think, remember, and pay attention to television programming more than they did in the past. Because people have been trained to be more intelligent in their viewing, the popular television programs have been able to take advantage of the heightened sensibilities of the audience.
Comparing Television Then and Now:
I will admit I typically go days without seeing a television on and usually only see a bit of America’s Funniest Videos, Mythbusters, something on the History Channel, or whatever happens to be on TV when I visit someone (our basic cable connection is there for watching hurricanes). I do still pay some attention to what is going on in the media world, just don’t quiz me on any plots I just read about them online.
Consider programs like Mr. Ed, Dragnet, Get Smart, Bewitched, or Knight Rider. For the most part they were pretty simple. Most episodes were self contained and could be watched out of order in syndication years later with nothing lost. They had a group of main characters and most extra characters could be forgotten about because their actions on one episode had no bearing on future episodes.
Now consider some of the big serial shows which require in depth consideration of an entire season’s multiple plot threads. 24 is an action packed day in which something that happened at 2:00PM impacts what happens at 7:00PM a month later. West Wing was an entire presidential term including campaigns and foreign relations issues that kept slipping back into the story line.
Even game shows have grown from people being tested on questions in a 30 minute time limit to watching the lives of competing individuals strategizing for $1 million or a job.
The individual in the podcast admits that just because people are smarter in managing more complex plots does not mean they are truly smarter in real life situations or better people for tracking those cannisters on 24. But, television writers have trained us to think in a way that lets them grow the story without losing us, and in response they have an enthralled audience.
Food for the Lost:
Realizing the importance of bringing our congregation up from warm milk to a big juicy steak with potatoes, why do so many preachers give “Three’s Company” sermons to a “Lost” audience?
I have to admit that when I was preaching full time I did an occasional low IQ topical sermon in which I did a search on the topic keyword in Quickverse and sermonillustrations.com and threw everything into a cheap 3-Point outline (1. What is it? 2. Why is it important? 3. How do you live it?). They are still good messages, but sometimes they are the spiritual equivalent of Splenda in that they taste like a sermon but without the same nutritive value.
I loved doing a sermon series in which each message was important on its own, but by the end I had built up the congregation to be able to understand a more in depth message that would have completely gone over their heads at the beginning of the series.
I loved taking people on a 7 week daily devotional study of the Gospel of Mark to introduce them to a book that teaches so much about Jesus in such an action-packed manner, and then using that as a foundation to get into the heavier doctrine of Romans.
Would someone Tivo your Sermon Series?
Many in the modern church have taken on television entertainment as a gold standard for what it takes to reach the people of this world, but it is too easy to grab onto the bad parts without incorporating the truly good parts. Keep the snappy music and clever cultural references, recognize that people enjoy drama and personal stories, acknowledge that people sometimes have attention spans shorter than (um, I stopped paying attention and lost my train of thought).
Oh, yeah, but also realize that people like to be engaged in an exciting thought process. Engross them and inform them. Show the depths and intricacies of the Word of God that they may have never known before. Perhaps the best sermon at Christ’s Church so far this year was on the evil life and subsequent redemption of King Manasseh. People who had never heard that name before were cut to the heart and opened to God in new ways.
The man in the podcast mentioned above said that television programs have become more complex so that people will want to watch them again. They will be interested in catching them again in syndication and actually paying attention or even buying the full season DVD boxed set.
We need to engage people so that they will have an increased hunger for the Word and a stronger thirst for righteousness.
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