Yesterday LifeChurch.tv’s Digerati team officially launched VideoTeaching.com. Consequently, the world may never be the same.
Much like the One Prayer initiative, VideoTeaching.com allows churches to hear guest speakers via free sermon video downloads. The idea behind it is that churches can have a free resource to expand their teaching team, give the pastor occasional breaks, share the load with church planters and bi-vocational pastors, and even serve as an interim “pastor” during a leadership transition.
VIDEO TEACHING AS A CHURCH MODEL
But reality is the scope of how VideoTeaching.com can be used is far deeper and versatile. In fact, a church could use video sermons all the time. Many churches have likely not been planted because the church planter believes he is not eloquent enough, theologically deep enough, or seminary certified to preach. However, when free video sermons from some of the world’s best preachers are available, obviously this excuse is gone.
4 Possible Video Teaching Church Models
- Central Organization
Similar to a multi-site church, this model has central leadership that oversees all locations and determines video teaching content that is the same for all campuses. Locations could either be planted by the central organization like most multi-site church campuses or passionate followers could start a location similar to LifeChurch.tv’s Church Online watch parties. - Central Admin
Similar to a denomination, this model has central leadership that oversees all locations administratively, but a campus pastor or elders determine the Video Sermon content for each location based on what that congregation’s spiritual needs are. For example, a New England location may struggle with greed while a location in Oklahoma may struggle with gluttony. While all sermon topics are important, this model allows for each campus to focus on what is most important to their spiritual walk. - Central Distributor
Similar to a standard church, this model has a central distributor of sermon content such as VideoTeaching.com, but each church is independent, self-governing, and determines its own video teaching content. - Extra Church
Similar to Sunday school and small groups, this model uses video teaching as extra doses of “church” in addition to weekend church services.
WHY CONSIDER VIDEO TEACHING?
Church conferences, authors, and blogs have been rallying for years for the Church to be like the early Church. We talk about organic explosive church growth that produces authentic disciples, but then we do little to change our methods. If we hardly change how we do church, then we can hardly expect to revolutionize the results we get.
So why don’t we change how we do church? I think it is because we are scared. We are scared of failing, and we are scared of doing something theologically wrong. Christians are notorious for boycotting anything new, including church organs and church choirs when they were first introduced. This is not to say that we should all jump on the Video Teaching band wagon like a bunch of lemmings. But I think we should ask questions.
Thinking rationally and theologically, why or why shouldn’t churches pursue the Video Teaching model of church?
I will be addressing some questions about video teaching in the weeks to come, including:
- What size should a video teaching church be?
- How can video teaching churches be kept spiritually accountable?
- How does the video medium affect the message?
- What about the development of future preachers?
- What are the advantages of video teaching versus one or a few preachers?
- What about video teaching children’s ministry?
- Will video teaching create more celebrity pastors?
- What does a multi-site video teaching house gigachurch look like?
For Discussion:
- Share your thoughts about video teaching in the comments and join in the unraveling discussion in the weeks to come.
The best preachers/ teachers are the ones who not only preach and teach the gospel, but live it out WITH you.
Although this is a great tool, and I commend LifeChurch for continuing to be a Kingdom church…my hesitation is that this is just a new way to make church “cool.” We don’t need churches to be cool, we need them to be the church.
My other thought is I don’t know that many people in our churches would know some/ or all of these “best preachers/pastors.” We may know them because we are leaders and are up to speed with the “Who’s Who” in the christian leadership world, but I don’t know they would. Lastly, is there any difference between watching a video teaching vs. watching some guy on the tv at home?
As a pastor of a small country church, in order to get away for a weekend, I’m going to try and utilize a message from Craig Groeschel from Open.lifechurch.tv. I’m trying it out but I don’t know how people will respond. Like Paul writing letters to teach the churches in the NT, there are times we need other voices to speak into our churches. Video Teaching is Perfect.
I don’t know about Kids ministry because I’m freaked out about the studies I see on the effect of TV on kids.
I’d love to see a church planted that is 75% video teaching…
it would free up resources like crazy, while maintaining high quality teaching.
Though “video teaching” is a great tool in advancing the Kingdom, I feel that it is not an appropriate substitute for congregational teaching, fellowship and worship.
This is a wonderful opportunity to reach out to all kinds of people, in addition to regular in-person church correspondence.
“Thinking rationally and theologically, why or why shouldn’t churches pursue the Video Teaching model of church?”
The immediacy of best of world communicators is a blessing that most Christians in the history of our faith have never enjoyed. We are a blessed people.
I use video communicators frequently, but only as a facilitation tool in our small group environments. We do so because we are bringing world class communicators into our group times to talk about priority needs. It is a giant win for us.
Theologically we limit this to our groups because there is always a facilitator in that room. Too often, I believe, we are pushing communication over being. We are adding to the celebritification of Christianity and neglecting the authenticity required by the Bible.
Being a pastor means you have a relational connection with the people you are leading. There is a good reason why the New Testament refers to pastors as “under-shepherds.” We are responsible for a flock. You can’t be a shepherd by television. The sheep need your presence.
Also, there is a degree of authority that is invested by God into under-shepherd (i.e. pastors.) As a Baptist I believe part of that authority is demonstrated in the preaching the Word of God to your specific congregation. Not videoing it. Another part of that authority is demonstrated by your presence and ability to speak to specific issues your congregation needs to hear.
When we remove the role of the pastor as the expositor of life and Scripture to a specific flock we are drawing close to two places:
1. Denying the role of the Spirit led man in our midst.
2. Becoming the Roman Catholic Church
The sacred liturgy of Rome is what is used in every Roman Catholic Church every Sunday. Priests (now they have more freedom) are encouraged to use the lectionary and speak a homily (or sermon) from a text prepared by Rome. This is, imho, an abrogation of the New Testament role of the Pastor.
We need more pastors and men of God led to be those people who nurture and develop Kingdom minded ministries in the local church. Otherwise we simply deny the efficacy of the Holy Spirit in leading our autonomous local church as the New Testament has modeled for us.
I shudder when I hear of pastors sitting down and pressing play in their services for the communication that day. The role of the pastor of local church is so important that we cannot abdicate one of the central callings of that role to someone who doesn’t know our people, our church, or our doctrine.
We need a serious challenge to the trends of this movement. I’m not against using new methods and innovation, but am completely against removing the central role of the pastor as a teacher and preacher for his flock.
Thanks and be blessed!
I was looking the other day at Five Trends for the Future of Church Planting from 2006 and its spot-on that this would be happening more and more. It could be the shift away from the local preaching pastor. As Matt Chandler (joked) in his life he may see a time where there are 15 preaching pastors. http://www.goodmanson.com/2006-08/26/five-trends-for-the-future-of-church-planting/
We’re doing it! We’re doing a 100% video church in rural Ohio. We were previously a part of a contemporary UMC that utilized a 4-week video series twice a year. The series presentation (by lifechurch.tv) was spot-on…well-prepared, well-delivered, not boring, Scripturally-based, and participants (not spectators) did just that-PARTICIPATED. They were emotional at appropriate times, raised their hands at appropriate times, and were more engaged than with our live preacher.
We felt called to start a church that is BOLDLY for those who are not attending church. (Most of these people go to movies, though, so this should be an easy step.)
We have been in the pre-launch stage for about 4 months. We are accelerating quickly and plan to use VideoTeaching.com for most (if not all) teaching.
We will provide a strong vision-oriented leadership team (no lead pastor).
For those who have complained that they would miss life alongside their pastor: In a large church, the pastor is not readily available to know everyone’s name and ministry support is given by members of the Leadership Team. This won’t be any different.
We believe we are onto something big and that God is blessing our faith and efforts. We look forward to what is ahead!
Thank you lifechurch.tv!!
[...] read an article located here touting the greatness of video venues and how they are the next big church planting model. In other [...]
Andy Crouch always asks a great question about an innovation: what does this say about the world? What does this make possible? What does it make impossible?
Quite different from Jesus’ day and style of teaching, our churches have become a place where you show-up, listen to a sermon, talk surface, go home. Video teaching is just the logical extension of that. Since we don’t have/need/prefer pastors that are deeply involved in each of the members’ lives (like Jesus with his disciples), video teaching works just fine.
Or, if you have really, really good small groups and good leaders - and you want to provide that depth of relationship (not every church does) - then video teaching helps you take care of the teaching part.
I just don’t think this is what God intended. Video teaching implies that God intended for essentially anonymous teachers to give messages to people who have no relationship with them - that it’s all about the content. I just don’t think that’s the case. In order to become good disciples of Christ we need Christly examples & leaders in our lives, specifically encouraging us to die to self, to fix this or that issue, to live like them.
I fear that embracing video teaching further allows people to become just church attenders & not real Christians living in the trenches. I think it further re-inforces the wrong idea that pastors do the Christian work & we just show-up on Sunday and pay money. I fear that for The Church - I want to see us effectively reach people &&&& turn them into real disciples of Christ that please God and can win souls as well.
So, Ken, LOVE LOVE LOVE this post and your blog. But in a very real way I disagree that this is something new. I think it’s just an extension of the existing paradigm - perhaps it will help facilitate more church plants. Maybe it’s not so bad, but I’m skeptical.
Love you, Ken! You ROCK!
CRUD! I called you Ken, not Kent. I’m sorry, bro! =( please forgive me!
This another nail in the coffin of the evangalical church. The root problem is the confusion of “communicating” with “preaching”. God help us!
@Stephen
I would love to hear you expound on the difference between “communicating” and “preaching” and the problems this confusion creates.
We must begin to recognize that not all shepherds are good communicators. And, to many people, if the pastor’s message is boring & irrelevant, it’s not worth getting out of bed for. Without attendees, it’s pretty tough to motivate them to go out and change the world for Jesus. Embracing this system leaves the communication to those who are gifted in that area.
It’s unfortunate that some believe that true discipleship, evangelism, and Christly leaders can only be accomplished with a “live” teaching pastor.
Churches that are too focused on their pastor are often guilty of allowing him or her to do all of the spiritual work. In our model, that’s not possible.
On the other hand, I do agree with Stephen. If we could find a gifted preacher who has a standard of excellence and can “bring it”, there’s always room for another person on our team. In the meantime, we’ll be going video.
would a dad put on a video to teach his son how to tie his shoes?
i don’t think so.
being a pastor is more than being a speech-giver once a week. it’s more than being a shepherd, telling sheep when/how to eat and sleep.
being a pastor is being a father.
and that’s what’s missing in “church”.
@Laura
Video teaching church models can still have hands-on leadership to shepherd the congregation.
See:
http://churchrelevance.com/the-video-teaching-church-model-does-not-kill-community/
Jesus tells us that we can know whether something is of Him by the fruit that it bears. I believe this strategy will bear much fruit for the Kingdom and that many, many people will get saved and discipled through this strategy. What will disappear is the human organization we like to call the church of Jesus Christ. But it isn’t really the church of Jesus Christ in most cases, it is our church, or our denomination’s church with the goal of building the human organization rather than the Kingdom of God. Jesus didn’t build a church, he simply did what He saw His Father doing and said what He heard His Father saying. If only we would do the same. Then we too could have the impact He did. And with 6+ billion people in the world, God knows we need to have some impact!
The hazards are the same imo. Helping people become followers of jesus requires communication not just words, and a life of commitment by leaders who are willing to be followed. There is nothing new imo, this seems like a variation on a yearly calander that come down from on high. In order to do this well the local leadership team will have to really work hard at implementation, planning the topics, and making the topics authentic to the congregation.
I think that videoteaching.com is going to be an amazing resource for many churches. So far, LifeChurch.tv’s OPEN has been a great resource for our church. We have begun an alternative worship service led mainly by volunteers and to have free access to great sermons allows us to have something that is completely different than what we offer at our traditional service.
If you do not like this resource, you do not have to use it. I would imagine that most critics would be the pastors that may feel threatened that a pastor from across the country or the world could be preaching in their pulpit at any given point in time. My thought is, if you are reaching people you would not have reached otherwise, you have just found a way to get more people into the Kingdom. And I am all for that. Thank you God for working through LifeChurch.tv to bring us this resource.
[...] blogged about how using video in place of a live teacher can not only be helpful, but spawn new church models. They also talked about the reasons why they believe video teaching won’t kill [...]
[...] I think Anderson is right to suggest that the “local sermon is crumbling” amid the abundance of excellent teaching now available online — in video podcasts, live web services, and even services like VideoTeaching.com. In fact, Kent Shaffer wrote an excellent blog series on why VideoTeaching.com is the next big church model. [...]
[...] Source: CHURCH RELEVANCE [...]