"Medium is the Message"

There is a great deal of conversation among people about this idea expressed in the phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan, "The medium is the message."  

The metaphor that is given is that the content of a message has as much meaning as the stenciling on the case of an atomic bomb.  

This cuts to the core of many preachers who feel that it is really the content of what is being expressed that matters a great deal than the actual medium that is used.  So churches debate the use of the internet to spread the gospel or maybe facebook is an important tool to use.  The conversation is more about the merits of a particular medium (be it print books or ebooks or radio or podcasts etc.)  rather than the actual medium itself.  Put another way, the mediums are often seen as neutral and do not have an agenda.  

McLuhan would argue against this idea.  He would argue that in fact every medium has it's own message regardless of the content it is expressing.  

Here is an example given by Shane Hipps who says that if a fifteen year old boy were to tell you, "God loves you."  That would mean something.  However, it would take on a different meaning if an eighty year old widow who lost a child said, "God loves you."

Another example not from Hipps: I can say forgiveness is what the world needs.  But it is something different when the parents of the victims of the Amish school shooting say, what the world needs is forgiveness.  

If it was the content, if it were the words of the message that was most important than it would not matter who said the words, it should carry the same weight coming from a teenager or a widow.

The medium is the message.  

What sort of medium are you becoming?  

Church as Revelation

It is often misunderstood, even by Christians, that the Bible contains the words of God.  It does not.  The bible is however contains the word of God, but the bible doesn't contain the exact words of God.

When Christians talk about the word of god, let us also be clear that we at not talking about the words on the page in the bible.  The word of god is made known in the life of Jesus Christ. The bible is one way we access the word of god (AKA Jesus).  Therefore the bible contains the Word of God.  We can access the Word by way of the Bible.

Additionally, since the Word of god no longer is enfleshed among us in the form of Jesus, god called the church to be the body of Christ.  You and I are the body of Christ today.  Just like the bible is used to access the Word of god, so too the church is used to access the Word of god.

Do you see where this is going???

If Christ is the greatest revelation of god known to the world, and the church is now the body of Christ then the church is as revelatory of the nature of god as the bible.

The church is as revelatory as the bible because both give access to the Word of god.

This should scare you a little bit.

It is easy to only see the bible as the source of access to the Word because that keeps the Church off the hook.  When we take seriously the idea that Christ is made known in the church as Christ is also made known in the scriptures, then our behavior is changed.  We are transformed.

When we buy into the idea of Sola scriptura as access to god then we are saying that god is done working.  God is no longer active and moving today.

So while the church may fail at exposing the word of god at times, I wonder what it might look like if the church too seriously the idea that we are called to be the body of Christ.  Are we willing to be that revelatory?

Ministry re-tweeting

There seems to be a couple to types of people I encounter on the internet - tweeters and re-tweeters.

Creators of content (tweeters) and replicators of content (re-tweeters).

Both serve a function and have a place.  I will be honest however, I do not care to much about reading the re-tweeters re-tweets.

Re-tweeting picture :)

Re-tweeting is rather safe to do and involves little engagement with the re-tweet.  Most of the time when I re-tweet I just post what I am re-tweeting without any context as to why I am doing so.  "Hey! Here is a quote I found. Re-tweeted by a person."

Re-tweeting is not a bad thing at all.  It however is not the same as tweeting.

When you tweet you create something new and put yourself out there.  You have to give some context as to what you are doing or why you are tweeting it.  You have to share something about yourself and be expose to criticism.  When we only re-tweet we have the ability to hide behind it and no one is sure if we agree, disagree with the re-tweet.  No one knows if a re-tweeted comment is meant to be a joke or serious.

Many of us clergy in my beloved denomination might be described as ministry re-tweeters.  We say we want to do different ministry or creative or innovate ministry, but this is a code for something else.  Most of the time clergy want an different/creative/innovative ministry that someone else has somewhere else but no one is doing it here.  For instance, I ministry re-tweeted the Fort Worth Dish Out.

A ministry re-tweet is not bad, it just is much safer and puts the clergy at a safe distance from the failure or success of the ministry.

tweeting pictures :)

What the UMC is perhaps missing are clergy and laity who are ministry tweeters.  The ones who are creating content/ministry.  The ones being vulnerable, exposed and opening themselves up to failure and even, dare it be stated, shame.  I am currently working on a couple of ministry tweets: Jubilee Bank (a micro-finance for the working poor in Fort Worth Texas using the connectionalism of the UMC) and Five Thousand Words (which first incomplete draft can be found here).

Others can account to the amount of ministry tweeting and re-tweeting I participate in, but the UMC might be a fruitful place if we were to find a balance between ministry tweeting and  re-tweeting.