For Kyle Idleman, associate minister of Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, Ky., sitting down to compose a sermon means logging on to the Internet. The youngest of the three preaching ministers on staff at one of the top five largest churches in American considers technology not only a timesaver, but also a new language in which to impart the gospel.
"Technology has completely changed the way I prepare for a sermon," Idleman wrote in an e-mail interview. (It has also changed the way he does interviews.)
"I spend at least 10 hours a week on the Internet just doing research," Idleman said.
In addition to an easy technique for preparing a sermon, technology has provided a new medium for communicating, according to Idleman. "Technology simply allows you to communicate more effectively," he said. "If you were going to be a missionary to Korea, it would be worth your time and trouble to learn Korean. Technology allows you to speak the language of our culture as you communicate the message."
Powering up sermon prep
Young and old audiences alike appreciate well-honed messages. One of the less controversial incorporations of technology in the church is in sermon research. Thousands of church leaders
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Where do 200,000 pastors go for sermon preparation? Search 60,000 free sermons, illustrations & dramas.
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SermonCentral.com currently has about 10,000 subscribers interested in finding help with 50,000 sermons accessible on-line, 10,000 illustrations ready to fit into a text, and 500 dramas. The site averages 200,000 users a week.
What do all those sermon seekers want? Free stuff. All the sermons posted on the site are available for free. Half of the illustrations are free. All the dramas are free.
"My commitment on the sermon site is 100 percent free forever," said Brian Mavis, general manager of SermonCentral.
Subscriptions at Sermon Central offer paying customers even more resources, some that are delivered to their e-mail inbox each week, thus saving time searching.
Mavis also said that what distinguishes SermonCentral from other sites that also offer free or subscription-based access to sermons and illustrations, is the contributors. "We have thousands of people around the world contributing illustrations," he said. While other sites tout big names in preaching circles, SermonCentral is more about big participation.
The number of ministers who participate in the site broadens the perspective of preachers as well as unifies them through the Word. "It is a timesaver," Mavis said, "but besides that it also helps pastors eliminate any blind spots that they have and get insight they couldn’t have had otherwise. For example, if you’re doing a sermon on a Scripture or a topic you can do a search and up come hundreds of sermons on that and they are rated by our own users so the cream rises to the top. You’ll read a perspective from another person, perhaps from another denomination, maybe somebody from Australia. You get more of a Kingdom of God perspective."
"We’ve heard from our own community of users and contributors that it has helped unify the body of Christ. I get regular e-mails from a pastor who said, ‘I thought our group was the only group that had the truth. And I’ve repented.’"
"We allow for denominational distinctions," such as speaking in tongues or infant baptism, said Mavis. He and the others at SermonCentral who read prospective sermons for the site require only that sermons avoid heresy, inflammatory remarks, vulgarity or brevity.
Power up PowerPoint
In addition to research help, graphics help is also available on-line. At SermonCentral, subscribers receive one PowerPoint free each week.
"In so many respects, PowerPoint is the communicator’s dream methodology," David Larsen wrote in an article for Preaching magazine last year. But Larsen, who is professor emeritus of preaching and associate director of the professional doctoral programs at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Ill., said he cautions users, mostly preachers feeling the pressure to incorporate technology into the pulpit, that a little PowerPoint goes a long way.
"I don’t think anyone should use it all the time," Larsen said. He also said there is a danger that ministers may spend more time on the pictures than on the exegesis of the text.
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-- David Larsen, |
I do not deny a picture is worth a thousand words — if it’s the right picture.
Larsen also said graphics should fit both a preacher’s style and a congregation’s style. While mega churches have led the postmodern charge for PowerPoint preaching, other more traditional churches are finding it can make sermons more effective, once they get over the hurdle of making it happen.
"This whole discussion leaves the small church in shock," said Larsen. With many ministers of smaller congregations already wearing several hats and possibly even working as a pastor only part-time, organizing media presentations for Sunday’s sermon may be too much to ask, he said. And he argued that technology is not the only way to reach postmodern culture.
"We need to do a lot of reading and thinking about where people are, but I think we can become reductionistic and simplistic in sweeping generalizations," Larsen said. The smaller church in South Holland, Ill., where he serves as an interim pastor, lost its younger members to nearby mega-churches of suburban Chicago because it was at first reticent to change. When the church finally did try something new, Larsen said they went to the extreme in postmodern worship style and technological communication and alienated older people. "Now they have neither [older or younger members]," he said.
Technology for the traditional
But a growing number of smaller churches, and many traditional churches have found a use for technology in their pulpits, especially as the ease of incorporating things such as PowerPoint or video increases. Vince Williams, vice president of business development for Oxygen Multimedia Ministries, said their Web site for preaching images is becoming popular with traditional churches.
"We’re really seeing a huge influx now of those churches," he said. "When you start seeing churches like that using PowerPoint it tells me technology is seeping into the woodwork. We’re a visual country and I think churches are seeing that has a purpose."
Williams quoted Barna Research indicating 60 percent of churches are now using some form of visual presentation. Williams said he sees the PowerPoint trend moving into all churches. Oxygen reports some 4,000 customers in their database, 300 subscribers since the first of the year and some 100,000 pastors each month who use the site in one way or another.
"A lot of people are coming to us because our solution is so easy to use."
Churches that choose an Oxygen image can download it for a few bucks or pay for a subscription, up to $25 a month. The site also offers downloads that work with different visual software or as graphics for print and Web material.
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Oxygen also offers more traditional biblical imagery that may resonate more with traditional churches and they also offer tutorials and tips for using images effectively.
"Our goal is really to help people at the front lines win more people for the kingdom of God," Williams said. "We can’t just throw out graphics. We train people."
Oxygen offers free tutorials on their site with tips on using imagery, because technology for the sake of technology doesn’t impress anyone. Larsen said one young preacher spoke at his church recently and used 36 PowerPoint slides during a 24-minute sermon. Too much, Larsen said.
"I do not deny a picture is worth a thousand words — if it’s the right picture," he said.
Idleman said he tempers his use of technology by asking himself two questions: 1)Does this element enhance or distract from the message? and, 2) Does this element turn my message into a performance? Does it make my message seem showy and pretentious?
"If I’m doing a sermon on money I might cut away in my message to a video of me in a shopping mall," Idleman said as an example of how he uses technology in his preaching. "If I want to communicate that I’m discouraged by the decline of culture I might sit back in a stool and have the lights go down."
While technology, languages and cultures continue to change, the drive to communicate the message keeps preachers seeking the most effective tools.
The picture has to be right for the audience, according to Idleman. "Technology allows you to speak the language of our culture as you communicate the message," he said.
For more in this series, read: Church tech, part two: The virtual world of data and Church tech, part three: Paperless stewardship.
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