The Medium is the Message

"The medium is the message" was a famous statement made by Marshall McLuhan and I am reflecting on its veracity. Having been raised in the evangelical tradition, I have always been taught that the media we use to present the gospel does not have any significance -- the unchanging message is the only thing that matters. But does something about the message of the gospel become cheapened or compromised by plastering it on a billboard or summarizing it in a pamphlet or blaring it on the radio or broadcasting it on TV? Evangelicals have always been at the forefront of harnessing new technologies for the sake of "winning souls." Whether it was the dawn of the printed page or the radio or the TV or the internet or Facebook, evangelicals have had no hesitations about adopting such media for their cause.

But something within me fears that our uncritical inculcation of new forms of media has actually changed the message. Let's take Jesus for example. What were Christ's media? First, it was the spoken word and the telling of stories. Second, it was in eating; the bread and the wine communicated the gospel to people. Both of these methods are what I would call incarnational. They meet people where they are in the flesh. They are personal, intimate, and community-oriented. Contrast this with the new "Drive-thru churches" or "e-churches" popular in our day. Such media communicate that the gospel is essentially about information rather than relationship, about abstract propositions instead of community. The spoken word and food seem to be the preferred media of God because the form of media that we use is not morally neutral. Media itself communicates a message and can either strengthen that message or undermine it.

When I preach on Sunday before a small, intimate audience of hurting people who are haunted by fears and anxieties and I declare, "Take heart for God has overcome the world!" this is a very different experience than a televangelist impersonally pleading for money before a video camera and persuading his listeners with the words, "Take heart for God has overcome the world!"

I believe that it is no coincidence that teens and twenty-thirty somethings are flocking to churches which use liturgy, symbols, proclamation, and ancient forms of worship such as the Eastern Orthodox Church. In an age so saturated with multiple forms of media, young people hunger for intimacy, community, and incarnationality. Perhaps we would do well to return to the ancient practices of the church rather than trying to innovate by planting churches in hollowed out movie cinemas. Let's trust Christ's preferred media and assume that he knows what he's doing by offering us Word and Sacrament.

(Credit to Warren Cole Smith, author of A Lover's Quarrel with the Evangelical Church, for inspiring me to write this post).