Editor's note: In the following excerpt from his book, The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media Shapes Faith, the Gospel, and Church, author and pastor Shane Hipps offers a prophetic call to the church. He wants followers of Christ to be aware of the ways our messages are impacted by the ways in which we communicate. Whether you agree or disagree with his assertions, we think these are important issues to think about—and discuss—as the church moves forward into the era of digital media.

Issues [concerning the ways in which media affected the gathered community of the church] are often only raised—if they are raised at all—when dealing with simple forms such as the projection screen. We seem less interested in asking question[s] about the more pervasive and complex cultural forces at play both inside and outside of the church. For example, if something as simple as a projection screen can have a dynamic effect on a congregational experience in worship, what happens when more complex media are infused into the life of a church or into the lives of the people who are the church? What is the effect of the Internet on the way we think about and do church? How does the medium of television shape our understanding of community, leadership, and mission? In what ways is our understanding of the gospel altered when we communicate or preach with pictures instead of words?

Media: The Cultural Architect

The answers to these questions are based on a simple notion: The firms of media and technology—regardless of their content—cause profound changes in the church and culture. The power of our media forms has created both challenges and opportunities in the ways the people of God are formed. Unfortunately, just as Dorothy and her companions missed the man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz, we stand oblivious to the hidden power of media. Most of us point and stare at the giant wizard head wreathed in flame, quite unaware it is only a distraction—the con man's sleight of hand.

The time has come for the church to pull back the curtain and expose the true effects of media. While this may sound like the hunt for some notorious villain, it is not. The media to which I am referring are neither evil nor good. Yet this in no way means they are neutral. Their power is staggering but remains hidden from view. Because we tend to focus our gaze on their content, the forms of media appear only in our peripheral vision. As a result they exert a subtle yet immense power. By exposing their secrets and powers, we restore our ability to predict and perceive the often unintended consequences of using new media and new methods. This understanding of media is crucial to forming God's people with discernment, authenticity, and faithfulness to the gospel.

Mr. No Depth Perception

In 1991, Saturday Night Live introduced America to Mr. No Depth Perception, played by Kevin Nealon. The title tells the story: It's a sketch about an enthusiastic and well-intentioned man who is completely unaware of the fact that he cannot perceive depth or distance in the world.

In the sketch, Mr. No Depth Perception is energized by the prospect of going sky-diving. He imagines how thrilling it must be to "pull the rip cord at just the right moment," only to have his hopes dashed when his wife, for obvious reasons, adamantly refuses to support his eager aspiration. Later he crashes his head through the living room window in a simple attempt to see who is knocking at the door. The sketch goes on like this, but you get the point.

I find Mr. No Depth Perception to be an appropriate metaphor for the church's relationship to media and technology. We are able to see, but we have great difficulty perceiving. We are able to make observations about what's going on around us, but we often misappropriate the meaning of these observations. We recognize that the use of image and icon is fast displacing the written word as the dominant communication system of our culture—a trend easily identified when Nike can strip its name from the swoosh icon without losing an ounce of brand recognition or equity—but we fail to perceive what the new iconic symbol system truly has the capacity to do and undo. We can see the glut of reality TV shows propagating the airwaves, but few understand that these shows reveal more about our understanding of community than our voyeuristic tendencies.

Our response to these shifts often stops with simplistic exhortations to either adopt or avoid the torrent of images. We either argue that electronic media have rendered old ways of doing church obsolete or that the new electronic storm is something to be resisted by creating a counterculture. These are not invalid responses; they are simply insufficient.

With Both Eyes Open

Like Mr. No Depth Perception, we are quite unaware of the limitations and dangers of our disability, sharing instead in his enthusiasm. Heralding the high virtue of efficiency and effectiveness, we eagerly embrace new media and technologies, assuming they will get the gospel message out better and faster. But prior to making decisions about how to appropriate new media, we must take seriously the role of technology and media in our culture and in the church.

To perceive media and technology with both eyes open, we cannot simply list the various benefits and liabilities of all new and existing media in hopes of understanding their power and meaning. Instead, the task before us requires an entirely different approach to analyzing media, recognizing them not simply as conduits or pipelines (i.e., neutral purveyors of information), but rather as dynamic forces with power to shape us, regardless of content. Such an approach invites us to ask different questions, better questions, and moves us beyond the oversimplified but common belief that media forms can be deemed good or bad based on how they are used. This perspective is deeply entrenched in the assumption that a medium can be considered "redeemable" if it dispenses the gospel or educational information, but "evil" if it distributes sex and violence. It is imperative we move beyond this paradigm and realize that our forms of media and technology are primary forces that cause changes in our philosophy, theology, culture, and ultimately the way we do church.

Copyright © Shane Hipps. Taken from The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media Shapes Faith, the Gospel, and Church (Zondervan, 2005). All rights reserved.