Before the church wrestled with how the internet would shape our church culture, we wrestled with how the printing press would shape our church culture.
This essay from Carl Trueman is gold:
It is probably a year or so since I raised the question of the impact of celebrity on evangelicalism. As I was told then, celebrity either does not exist in the evangelical subculture or is of no real importance there. Thus, I suspect the Evangelical Industrial Complex either does not exist or exerts no influence; but it is entertaining to imagine what would the signs be that it was a real issue (which, I am sure you will agree, it is not).
The aesthetics of success would subtly and imperceptibly supplant the principles of faithfulness or would indeed come to be identified with the same. The rhetoric of faithfulness would be retained, but the substance would be less and less important. Thus, the key leaders would be the men at the big churches or with the ability to pack a stadium or to handle media with slick sophistication. Fruitfulness and faithfulness would be rhetorically opposed in a way that would be ridiculous if we were talking marriage, but which somehow seems plausible in a church context.
This isn't a new problem, of course. In the early days of his work in Geneva, Calvin was strongly opposed to publishing his sermons. He believed that the commentaries he wrote were for all Christians, but his sermons to the church in Geneva were specifically meant for the church in Geneva and shouldn't be published for people outside the Genevan church to read.
Of course, you can probably guess what happened. Printers in nearby cities simply started selling unauthorized copies of Calvin's sermons that didn't always reflect his actual beliefs. Consequently, Calvin had to make a compromise and authorize a printed version of his sermon simply to prevent unauthorized versions from getting out. (As an aside, this is one reason I appreciate it when prominent churches put their sermons behind a paywall. That paywall is going to keep a lot of casual sermon listeners from regularly listening to their preaching and becoming more influenced by that then by their own pastor at their own local church.) The lesson here seems to be that technological developments can make our ideal scenario for church life a bit harder to realize.
Login to read more
Sign in or create a free account to access Subscriber-only content.
Topics:
