The Ubiquitous Screen

Orwell warned us of the power of the screen - albeit a two way one - but everywhere that I now look I see a screen.  A TV screen, a computer screen, a projected screen, an ipad screen, the screen that focuses our personal attention.   Many churches have embraced the screen in worship.  Liturgical words are now projected, songs projected, biblical texts projected and whilst I do this myself I also have some questions regarding what it does to our shared corporate worship.

Firstly, it takes the text out of its original context and reframes it in a new one.  The screen becomes the context.  For example I can project three verses of scripture onto a screen in a service, people will see the three verses but not the context that it was taken from.  The person leading has the potential to manipulate the text as it is not placed in its wider original context.  The screen becomes the context and in culture more widely it seems that we have the ability to discern the context that the screen is setting - i.e is this a film, a documentary, is it the BBC is it Sky.  In a church setting I'm not quite sure that we have discerned the genre of the screen.

Secondly, the screen is used for entertainment and whilst I think that church should be enjoyable, it should not be for entertainment.  When I sit down and watch the TV at home, I have the mentality that says 'entertain me' - I wonder whether people enter our churches look at the screen and think 'entertain me'.  Church and worship becomes part of the entertainment culture that we are part of rather than offering an alternative

Thirdly, how does the screen affect our corporate point of focus. When a group of people reads from a book it is a different experience to reading off a screen.  In many ways a positive one as people are no longer mumbling into books but are looking up at the people around them - but a physical element is lost as the hands are not used.   They are either free to be used or redundant with no use.  I'm convinced that posture is important in worship, for centuries the book has dictated our posture, that has now been removed and I'm not convinced that we have rethought our posture.

Anyway, we've just bought a new telly for the World Cup!  Ours was turning
everything yellow and so I would have thought England were Brazil...until they passed the ball to Heskey.


 

Comments

[Glen]

Entirely agree about the power of the screen. I've led a number of believers baptist services where the action was simultaneously cast on a screen to help those at the back to see. Guess what? Even those with a front row seat spent more time watching the screen!

Some questions / observations: What about the screen's association with work? I reckon the way we use computer screens, smart phones, iPad (not that I've got one)and the like is blurring the distinction between work and play. Wonder what implications that might have for medium and message stuff in church? Also, worth bearing in mind that worship is not simply a blank cypher onto which other cultural meanings are imprinted (pixelated?) worship brings its own meaning to the table and shapes even as it is shaped. There is if you will a bidirectional hermeneutical flow.

[Matt Rees]

I think we can also maybe add car windscreen to the list of screens that dominate our lives. we do now seem to see life mainly through a screen of some kind. I wonder what it's doing not just to our churches but us as individuals.

[Karen]

Interesting points made, and I think I'm in agreement, especially re: the context part. And the posture - in the western world we are so self-conscious about physical self-expression in a group setting. With a screen, we're hands-free, but often (at one of my churches, anyway) we stand like statues singing with our arms held down at our sides, motionless, not even daring to look around at each other, but eyes fixed to the screen. It feels weird (sometimes).

[steve]

Not sure if this is a spoof or not. While all technology needs critical care, I can imagine priests saying the same thing when the first Bible whirred off the Gutenberg press ...

Firstly, it takes the text out of its original context and reframes it in a new one. The book and page becomes the context ...

Secondly, the book will be used for entertainment, to read as a novel at home and so will people open a prayer book and Bible with an 'entertain me' mentality ...

Thirdly, how will the book affect our corporate point of focus. When a group of people reads from a book it is a different experience to hearing from the front ...

steve

[Ben Edson]

Not a Spoof!

I have no issue with reading the full text off a screen, I do struggle when a single verse is projected without the surrounding text - When the bible whirred off the guttenberg press the surrounding text was still there and hence the text was set in its context. I think that to fully understand the text we need to see it placed in the wider context. I think that the danger of this is that is can create a degree of biblical illiteracy as people don't know the broader context, and also it leaves the text open to manipulation...

Entertainment - good point! But I'd be a rather sad man if i took the book of common worship home to read as entertainment.

Corporate point of focus - my point is that it needs to be considered and thought through rather than just assumed that it's good. Many have embraced it uncritically, all I want is dialogue around the pros and cons. i.e How does the use of the screen change our posture, does that change in posture help or hinder our corporate worship?

[Glen]

So, having The Bible printed was superior to how Jesus and the apostles accessed scripture? Listening to the word read doesn't give the same access to context as the printed word, or rather we have a different kind of access. But then screen technologies (seen as a whole rather than simply from the point of view of some uses of screens in worship) also give us the kind of searchability and access that the printed era could only dream about. Think how cumbersome it was to use a printed concordance. Think how the smart phone screen gives us access to the scriptures 24/7 wherever we are - yes I had a pocket Bible but that didn't work, not quite pocket enough, so I went for a pocket NT but then bang goes over 2/3 of the text.

I realise that this is extending the debate beyond your original post but I do think it is important that we think together carefully about the power of media to shape our apprehension of the message not just in corporate worship but also more widely. For what it's worth I reckon each medium has it's own very particular influence. Some aspects of these influences will be desirable others less so.

So thanks for raising the issue - lets keep on conversing our way toward insight.