Media-Shaped Churches?

Unplugged Online offers a great take on how media is shaping our churches in "The Medium Makes the Church." (Thanks to loyal reader Russ for the heads-up.) Lots of juicy nuggets, including:

“And what accounts for our shift from theologically dense hymns and liturgies to more emotionally based praise choruses? How about worship services that include dance and even painting? Though Jesus captivated listeners for hours on hillsides sans microphone, backup singers and video screens, the prevailing fear among pastors now is that their churches—buoyed by hilarious skits, rock bands and audiovisual effects—will still be thought of as dull.”

"[The Internet] creates a permanent puberty of the mind," Hipps, a Mennonite pastor and author of Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith, told Christianity Today. "We get locked in so much information, and the inability to sort that information meaningfully limits our capacity to understand. The last stage of knowledge is wisdom. But we are miles from wisdom because the Internet encourages the opposite of what creates wisdom—stillness, time and inefficient things like suffering. On the Internet, there is no such thing as waiting; there is no such thing as stillness."

I often marveled at how the Hebrews somehow lost touch w/their holy scriptures to the point they were shocked to find the scrolls buried under temple rubble (Josiah?). Apparently, they had been living on tradition alone. I hope the internet doesn’t put us in a similar position…