The guys over at oldworship new had a fascinating post on the use of new media in worship, and were asking for feedback as concerns online sermons. As I commented over there, I think they are a great thing, and the common negative response of such leading to decreased participation in worship is really a non-issue. However, there are a few more bits to consider, thus this blog entry.
Most certainly online sermons can foster greater connectivity, especially for those who cannot attend, either due to distance, schedule, or mobility concerns. In addition, the ability to hear a sermon again from a retention standpoint can be a really huge deal. Yet another aspect, is that a sermon can remain online for many years, and it can reach much further than just the original congregation it was preached to on a given Sunday. A great example of this is at Sarah Laughed, where Dylan blogs the entire lectionary… case in point, from back in 2007.
Like many things though, providing online sermons sound great in theory, but in practice one may find the number of readers, listeners, or viewers to be a very small number. In a lot of cases, the numbers are so small, that unless the process to put the sermon online is incredibly painless, such efforts are often very short lived.
Another issue is the ability for hearers to provide feedback. For sure, feedback can provide a lot of value, it can as the newworshipold guys said, allow a far off college student to interact with her home congregation. It can provide for more personalized and directed challenge to specific parishoners. It can also serve as an easy way for parishoners to encourage the preacher.
However, feedback is not without problems… you can run into things which can freak out your congregation. You can run into things where folks have a vastly different worldview. For some examples of such… Brant Hanson, with a post entitled, If Jesus had a Blog provides some excellent examples…. plus take a look at the live comment stream too. On the other hand, through all the messyness, there are some really cool things going on too.
There is also the issue of cost and witness to consider. There are many great free services for text, for audio, and for video… but you give up screen space for advertising which may not always be appropriate. There are premium accounts, where upon you pay for usage and storage space which give you more control, but alas, some of them can get pretty spendy fast.
Lastly is the issue of how comfortable the pastor is, which I touched on briefly at oldworshipnew. Most pastors dont want to become celebrities… but this can happen, if not globally, it can happen regionally. Its the sort of thing which needs to be considered initially, and also periodically along the way. Obviously there is a balance, the more views, the more folks are reached, which is very good… but then the potential for pastor icon status can also be a concern,
Ultimately, I think online sermons are well worthwhile… but it is important to consider the extra workload, how one will handle feedback, cost etc. Its not really the thing to jump into without at least considering some of the potential difficulties, and figuring out a game plan as to how best to deal with them.
