 Okay, good morning everyone. Welcome to BC 314, our class on media and technology. Thank you everyone for joining the class. Let's take a moment to pray and then we will start. Can somebody pray? It's time. Lord, we want to thank you for this morning. Thank you for giving us this opportunity to come into your presence to learn together. As we are learning this morning, we ask the Lord that you would minister to us and help us to understand new concepts. We pray to the Lord that we will be able to implement that ministry and also to have an idea about these technologies. You pray Lord Jesus that you would give us wisdom and understanding, less the time of learning in Jesus name we pray. Amen. Thank you. Alright, so last week we were just looking at certain areas of Christian ministry and how things have changed in those areas and what is the good in the bad? What are the pros and cons? What are pitfalls we must avoid? Let's quickly share that and I think maybe we would do a quick discussion on the last area that we were talking about. So we talked about ministering, how we have seen changes in this aspect of ministry. Now we are seeing contemporary ways and methods that are happening and we talked about the pros and cons in that. We talked about the gathering place, the menu, where people come and gather and also how things have changed. You know, live streams, satellite churches, live streaming and all of that. We spoke about the pros and cons. What are some pitfalls we must avoid? Then we went into worship. We were discussing worship and we also saw how worship has changed so much the way we worship. Of course, who we worship hasn't changed. It's still worshiping Jesus. It's still worshiping God. But so much has changed in the kind of songs we sing in the expression of worship. So much of music and styles of music and all of those things. So much has changed. So I want us to just quickly take some time here to discuss this and I think this is very important. When you think about contemporary Christian music, the kind of music that is being released both by churches and in our days we have different churches writing music. Some are very well known and some are doing it on a smaller scale. Churches are writing and releasing songs and at the same time we have this rich heritage of our songs that were written hundreds of years ago, like the hymns. And sometimes some choruses which were written much, many years before. But we have access to it. We can still sing the hymns. We can still sing some of those hymns. So the question is, when we look at church worship, Christian music today, what we want to discuss is what is the good in the back? And what should we avoid? What should we be careful of when we look at Christian music or worship music as a whole? What comes to your mind? I just wanted to open this time for some discussion. I just want to also be happy from different parts of the world. So it would be nice to hear in your region. Of course, I understand there is a lot of English music. But there is also a lot of Christian music in regional language and that is very specific to particular regions. So it would be nice to know what is happening there. And are we seeing the same kinds of trends? What are the pros? What are the cons? What should we be careful about? So let's just take a few minutes to discuss that and then we move forward. Please feel free to share so we can just learn from each other and also know what is going on in different places. And someone can start. Usually the first question has to start and then others will follow. So one of the things I have noticed in recent months or recent years is there are really good songs. But when you see the music video that how the church has produced it, and I think we have discussed this last time also, a lot of importance is given to how the production goes on. But if you just listen to the audio, it is so good. But the production quality of it or the importance it is given to the lights and the smoke and all that, it kind of distracts the purpose of worship. At the same time, there are really good songs. Songs are really good. You can sing as a congregation, you can sing into worship God. But I think the involvement of this kind of setting, the production has impacted it. And also, one another trend which we see is people write songs and awards and recognitions which are given. And it is actually a good motivator for the writers, but eventually it creates a celebrity culture. And when people introduce someone, they say, this award winner, that award winner. And it kind of takes the glory from God to trying to put to these people. That is one thing which I have been noticing. But at the same time, as Pastor was mentioning, there are hymns which have been reproduced even now. And even the lyrics of the songs, there is one particular band called Sovereign Grace Music which has been there for many years. But the songs that they write is so, something like hymn itself, but so theologically sound. So there are both types of songs that we see currently. Good observations. Good observation. And I think I agree that the production these days, when songs are being released, there's so much emphasis, not just on the song and the music, but also the whole production. And for better or for worse, it can either distract or it can bless people. Good. Celebrities. That's also another issue. Anyone else? Thank you for sharing. Anyone else? If I may add one more. Another thing which we notice in our church is we sing a very regional language song. But if I can accept it, it's connected to regional language songs. And many people have said that they stay home because they think that they should use the song. So different languages to attend an English church. This can be connected to their own language song. Yeah, that's true. So there is that benefit. I mean, while we generally are singing a lot of English songs, because we're living in a city and all that, there is that, I guess, the connection of the heart to songs being written in the mother tongues and the regional languages. Yeah, definitely. Go ahead. Anyone else? Yeah. Can you hear me, Pastor? Yeah, so based on one of my observations, like when the youth write the songs these days, and I've seen some of the song where there's no mention of even the name of Jesus, and it's more feeling based, more emotional based. I do say it's a Christian song and it's more like a positive song from my side when I see the lyrics, when we see the crowd pumping out and all this. Maybe the Christian community can, they just say truth and they don't say what's the truth. So some of the songs I have heard like that and I felt, I don't know if it's right or wrong, I don't want to debate on that. People do like the music, people do like the song, but I personally don't feel like it's without the name of Jesus. Like when an unbeliever listens to the songs, they might not encounter Jesus, they might not encounter that death singing about Jesus, it just becomes an enormous song. And I've heard quite a songs like that, which are sung by Christian fans and they are doing it for the glory of God. But in the end I don't feel like it's being expressed through the songs, and that's one of the lack I feel like, but not many songs, but quite a few songs are like that where there's no mention of the name of Jesus. And maybe they are doing it so that they can be socially accepted, that's what I feel because it's kind of a safer side, it's kind of like everyone can hear it. But yeah, but I don't feel like it's so beneficial. Yeah, that's a good observation. It's true, it's true. But I think, let me know, while you were speaking, I was suddenly reminded about, so at one point I don't know how much it is there today, maybe it is still there today. There were Christian artists, and maybe it is still there today, who were trying to say, okay, I want to reach out to the unseen. And in order to do that, they started writing these kind of songs, sometimes even songs that we would say are very secular, even love songs and those kinds of songs. And these are believers, Christian artists, Christian musicians, so they go from writing songs of worship to writing songs where their target audience is people outside the church in the world. And this is a big debate, or I should say, is it right, is it wrong, they look at it as a form of evangelism, a form of outrage, etc. So that is the trend, I think it's still going on these days, and that's why we have to be careful where in church, coming together as a people of God, our focus is worship, and our focus is to worship God and build each other up in faith. If artists want to use their gifts and talents outside the church as a means of evangelism, we leave that between them and God. Our goal is to encourage them to be strong in faith while they are engaging the world, and maybe using their gifts as a way to, evangelism is a way to reach people. Okay, if God has called them to do it, bless them, but we want to make sure they're strong, they won't get drifting away off into other things and maintain a good testimony, all of those things are there. Yeah, good doubts. Alright, anything else, anybody else wants to share anything about worship, worship music, pros and cons, what we should avoid? I would like to add one more, which is when famous celebrity like the secular singers, and they sing one part of the Christian song, like maybe the bridge, which is also becoming, I don't know if it's trending, but I have seen that happening. And when you go and listen to the song, you wonder whether you can listen or not, even though the lyrics are good, but we know the real side of the celebrity and their way of life and how they use the words in the other songs and their lifestyle, which are not really acceptable in the biblical principle stuff. But they have some Christian songs, I've seen some famous singers, they sing the bridge, the rap part, and it gets famous because the celebrity has sung the song. And the lyrics are even good, it's biblically strong, it's doctrinally sound, but still creates a lot of controversy among the Christians because it's a celebrity. It's the life they live, and maybe they don't have that motive, maybe the right motive for us to just to focus on God. So even that's quite a controversy creates a lot of questions and confessions, should we listen or should we not? And then finally, I personally have avoided, I don't want to get into the controversy. We've got much more songs that are really spirit-filled and from the worship bands. But yeah, it creates quite a controversy among the youth, like are you judging, are you being judgmental, don't you want them to be saved? Good thoughts, thank you for sharing. Alright, anyone else? Okay, so we know there's a lot going on in this ministry area of Christian music, Christian worship. And there's a lot of good, but there's also a lot of questionable things that we have to think about it carefully. And I think ultimately our focus is to worship God with music, without music however, but just worship God in spirit and truth be genuine and do it the way God wants us to do. Alright, let's move forward now. We'll look at a couple of, my plan was to cover at least three months of it today. Let's do that. Let's try to move forward. The next area that we want to talk about and look at is creative arts and how this has been and where this is going in the church. Now, when you talk about creative arts, we are talking about again a very wide range of things. There are many, many things out there. There's dance, there's drama, there's mind, you can have painting, writing, poetry, spoken word, lots of different expressions. We can add to, you know, sculpture, some people like to do sculpture work, some people like to do pottery. So there are many different creative expressions in the church. The whole idea is that these also can be used as forms of worship and forms of communication, communicating truths to people, which is true. That is, yes, it can. We can dance and drama and mind and so on and so forth. We'll talk about films and other things separately, but I'm just talking about creative arts here. That these can be used and if it is done well, it can be very effective. And I think some, you know, I've just mentioned a few examples. I'm sure, you know, online, you find lots and lots of different examples of people using this in the past, have used in the past, are using it today. I think, at least in recent, in the recent centuries, the evangelist Amy Semple McPherson, who founded the Four Square Gospel Trust, and she had a cathedral, you know, a sanctuary somewhere on the west coast of the USA. I think it's, and I could be wrong here, but maybe somewhere in California. And she was a healing evangelist who also had this place of ministry. And she used to have some sort of a production as part of preaching. So when she was preaching, it wasn't just her speaking, but she would be accompanied by a set where there were people playing music and drama, things happening, which enriched the ministry of the world. And she used that, you know, powerfully, in a very powerful way, to minister to people. And then, of course, she was preaching, she was evangelist, so she would preach and then pray for the people, minister to people as well. So, you know, people have been using down some drama and mime, theater, presentation in a very, very effective way. There has been, you know, also some outstanding dramas. The one that I've mentioned in the other notes is that of a production called Heaven's Gates, Hell's Flames. It was an evangelistic drama that came out of Canada. And it was very impactful, and I think this was again in the 80s, 90s, 1980s and 90s, that period of time. It was very impactful and that the drama itself prompted people or stirred people up to make a decision for Christ. And there are statistics that the drama was done by so many different churches. 43 years, 100 countries and many, many millions were affected. So you can, there's this example where God inspired somebody to write, to make this production. A lot of other churches started doing it and using it as a evangelistic outreach to which brought many people to faith in Christ. So drama also is a very powerful way of ministering. Other areas of that creative expressions, mime, painting, writing, poetry, doing spoken word. All of these things are also very creative expressions that are there. But none of these things are very simple or easy. It requires that people are gifted or doing good in those areas. Not all of us sit down and write poetry. There are some people who write and not all of us do painting, there are some who do. So different people are gifted in different ways and they can use that as an expression of worship or communication to minister to other people. Now, traditionally the church has not been very welcoming of this. I'm not saying it's never been, that no churches are, but I think generally you don't go to a Sunday morning self-sensee people doing painting or some creative thing. You don't find dramas happening every other time or quite clearly so that it may be there in some churches, but it's not mainstream. It's not something that's so much a part of the Christian community. So believers who may be gifted by God in these areas are of fine challenges, they face challenges. God has gifted them, maybe they can write drama, they can write poetry or mime or dance or things like that, but it's challenging. How can they express that in and through the church if the church is not supportive, if the church is not encouraging, if the church is not helping. So that's one thing we need to talk about. And the question is, how can we help believers use these kinds of gifts to communicate to audiences who would be able to connect with that. Some people like to read poetry and they may not listen to a sermon, but they may enjoy reading poetry. Some people may not come to a Sunday service, but if you say, hey, there's a theater production, there's a drama that's being produced, would you like to come? They may be willing to come for that because they're interested in that. So like that or painting, some people see the painting and God can use the painting to speak to them. So these are wonderful means of communication. The question is, now how can the church help these people? So I just want to, again, I just want to open up for some thoughts and discussions, which is speaking of these creative arts, what will be the pros and cons and challenges and big faults to avoid? Generally speaking, what if the church encourages the expression of creative arts? What should we be careful of? What should we be watchful about? Also, how can the church encourage these things, encourage creative arts? So maybe we just take a little bit of time to discuss that before we move to the next topic. So anybody has any thoughts? Creative arts, we've mentioned a few, there may be others, expressions. What you want to discuss is what are the pros and cons? If a church, a local church or a church community is going to encourage people to express and use creative arts as an expression of worship or communication, what should we be careful of? The second question is, how can we help people? Any thoughts, please? Let me also throw in my simple insight about that pastor, and if I'm wrong, I start to be collected. Number one, I think we should avoid going into adultery whereby when people start making sculptures of the Christ and they start to put them near the church. You know, people, since every day they are new believers, you will find that we might also go into the Roman Catholic ways of doing things. So I think we should avoid, we should be cautious about that. We know that we aren't supposed to be paying attention to sculptures because they are made by man, and we only know that it is always the Bible which stands and should always be followed. Apart from that, I think people can as well express their talents because I think God gave us the different talents to take us to different levels. But that should always be a point to avoid, to avoid people starting making sculptures of the Christ and putting it in front of the church. You know, people come to kneel as if it ends up being like the church is going into adultery. Thank you pastor. Thank you all. So that's a good point. That means any of this, you know, maybe sometimes people even worship paintings, paintings, sculptures or any of these expressions, they should not become objects of worship. That's something we should be very clear about. We should make sure people don't fall into that. You know, buy a painting, put it on the wall or something or some sculpture and put it in there and worship me. That's a good point. But we encourage people to constantly express their creative gifts. Any other thoughts? Please go ahead. I think it is very important to have this kind of communities because as we were discussing, there are people who are able to connect so well with poetry, painting, and sometimes they don't really connect with the sermon. So I think it is important to have such communities. But at the same time, I think we should take the biblical truths, even for example, say a person is interested in painting. So if that person may see a vision or see a dream or then paint, so we should ideally teach them how to interpret the vision and dream and how to worship the Lord with theologically sound artistic expression. So the sound doctrine should be taught to them in a way that they won't go deviated from the truth of the world of God. So the thing is, I've seen certain artists especially, when they begin to paint, the initial paintings are very similar to what we see like maybe a lion, maybe a lamb or a vision that they show. But going forward, we get to see a lot of things which is popping up, which is little off from the word of God. So I think it is really important for us to teach the word even as we cultivate this community. Very interesting, very good, very good. Yeah, I think this is a very important point. Making sure that these creative expressions are aligned to God's word, they don't go off on doing something strange. So I think it's a very good point. And so while we are nurturing this community, we need to make sure they are, you know, they're just aligned to God's word and expressing God's word, worship and spirit and truth. Very important, very good. Thank you for sharing. Divya, it's something to share, go ahead. Thank you, Pastor. When you said about the creative arts, I was reminded of something that we have seen like light and sound. I don't remember the complete name, it's called light and sound, where they would enact biblical stories, especially like we have seen story of Noha, David, or even Jesus's ministry. So they portrayed in a very, it's like a theater performance. So the audience gets, it's kind of, they get to experience the setting in a very real life manner. It's like, for example, if considering Noha's arc, that particular scenario, there would be like animals just coming, like walking right across the, you know, in between the audience and getting onto the stage. It's a very different kind of experience and it brings actually the story into life. As if even the people seeing this are in that particular timeline. It really brings the story as a real life experience. And it is good because I would say for us who are in a different cultural setting and context to know what the cultural setting was during those days. It is not possible when we just read a particular passage of the scripture. We cannot visualize, maybe these productions are just imagination of a set of people, but still they do a lot of research and try to come close to the cultural setting and context of those times. And it makes much more sense when we see those in front of our eyes and experience it and then we read the passage. It helps us to understand the people's, you know, the lifestyle, what they were going through in a better way. So it's the audiovisual experiences, I would say much, much effective than if we just read. So I found it very interesting. But at the same time, yeah, we have to be mindful of, you know, all the people who are not used to, who are, you know, a bit conservative or much traditional in their mindsets. So that should be taken into account when, especially like now we have all different kinds of productions coming up. And sometimes it goes off the real biblical, you know, account and try to interpret theology, like come up with doctrines and theologies through such productions. So that might get a little bit off, but that should be a very fine line, I believe. So it requires a lot of discernment to just keep these things within their boundaries. Yeah, but it has an effect unlike just reading or hearing a sermon. Thank you. Right, right. So thank you. Thank you for sharing that. So we are highlighting the impact that productions like this, the Enlightenment Sound and other theater productions can have a really real life experience. And it can definitely minister to some people, people who are interested in that. Any other thoughts? So I think we as a church community or as church communities around the world, it's good for us to encourage creative expressions, but as we heard today, you know, we must be aware of the pitfalls and don't let these things become objects of worship or don't let them go off outside of the Word of God into some strange things, keep it all aligned. And the focus must be, you know, as an expression of worship to God and as a ministry to people, to bring people to encounter God. So as long as that is very clear, stay true to the Word, doctrinally, and then keep the focus on the Lord. So then that way we can really encourage these expressions in our communities, Christian communities. Let's go to the next topic that we like to talk about, which is print media. So I'm slowly moving, I'm just, you know, what we're doing is we're just slowly covering different contemporary methods and then we will move into more of the media and the technology part, which will be a little more heavier in the second part of this course. So print media from the time, you know, from 1440 when the printing press was invented and the first Bible was printed around 1454 and the Bible started getting more printed. Yeah, you know, and today, you know, literally the Bible is printed in so many languages. Of course, there's so many English versions and, you know, thank God for the printing press and for the ability to print. I think all of us have at least one copy of a printed Bible, something, you know, many more different languages. So it's just amazing. It's amazing how the fact that we're able to print has helped get God's word into the hands of so many people all over the world in different languages. So just thank God for this, this pool of the printed page, the print media. So it is a very powerful tool and many Christian ministers have worked in this area. I'm just mentioning a few scripted gift mission. They started back in 1888. They did publishing of the printing and publishing of the Bible in a portion of written over 1000 languages. They pioneered, you know, over 200 plus languages. So this is an amazing, amazing ministry. And I think in some parts of the world, scripted gift mission is still operating. It may not be as, you know, widely known, but it's still operating. But thank God for the work they did, you know, in getting God's word through print media in so many languages around the world. We also then hear about Gideons, Gideons International. They have been distributing God's word since 1908, more than 100 years. And they are in over 200 countries around the world. And their objective is very simple. We are printing the Bible, mainly New Testament, and we are going to place it everywhere possible. Schools, hotels, hospitals, wherever possible, put the Bible, put the New Testament out. This is an amazing mission and, you know, I'm sure many of us would have heard testimonies of people, you know, who at some of their very difficult times, they come across a Gideon Bible. And they open it and they read it and they encounter Jesus. So the Gideons International, another awful major ministry that took advantage of the made use of the print media to get the word of God out to so many nations and continues still today. And they're still doing a good work around the world. Another major ministry that we should be aware of are the Wycliffe Bible Translators. So they've inspired by William Downsend who initially went to Guatemala. He went to sell Spanish Bibles. He realized that, you know, they couldn't, they had their own language. So then he decided that, okay, I need to go, I need to learn that language. I need to translate the Bible into that language. And so that's how this whole ministry started, Wycliffe Translators. And so William Cameron Downsend in 1942 officially founded Wycliffe Bible Translators. So since 1942, their main goal here is to go through those communities. And from the grassroots level, so basically they go into communities where they have their own dialect or their own language. The Bible is not there. And in many cases, there is no script even for those languages because it's just a spoken language. And so they go, they learn the language, they write a script, I mean, they develop some sort of a script for it, translate the Bible in and then help people, you know, read the Bible. So it's, you know, it's something, it's going to that last mile where you have to write a script or you have to create, you have to learn a language that doesn't have any script, just a spoken dialect, create a script and then translate the Bible there into the language and give it to them and help them read it and understand and so on. So again, this is the amazing work that's going on. It's really helping fulfill the Great Commission that is take God's words to all the nations, all the people, groups and it's going on. So they've done 500 languages as of the year 2000. I'm sure they've done much more now. So again, the Bible translators using print media on Bible translation, so on. And so like this, there's so many, so many ministries around the world. And I just to share a little bit of our own journey. So as a church, from our very beginning, so from the year from the first year or from the first year we started 2001. One of the things we decided to do was we would print, write and print books and distribute them freely. So right from then we started printing books slowly and they started just giving them up freely. The goal is to get the teaching of the Word of God into the hands of people. And I was looking at it more from our own country in India where Christian bookstores, if they are there, they're only in the cities, main cities. And even in the main cities, there will be few Christian bookstores, not that many. So and also not everybody can afford to go and buy books, buy Christian books. So even if there is, first of all, there is no Christian bookstore. Even if there is a Christian bookstore, buying books is again, takes money. And so not everybody has access and definitely out in small towns and villages that are no, they have no access to Christian bookstores. So our goal was let's print the Word ourselves in a low cost way. We're not doing anything fancy, black and white and then distribute for free in as many languages as possible. And so we've been doing that now for more than 20 years, distributing it. I don't know, we've not kept count, but literally thousands upon thousands of books all across India in many, many Indian languages and we continue to expand that. And it's just wonderful to receive testimony. So people just to hear people say, I read that book and it touched my life and pastors will tell us, you know, be using your books to teach a congregation. People are using it in Bible colleges, seminaries, in conferences and seminars and so on. And just good to hear these testimonies. And for us, the joy is very good to get the word of God out to people who otherwise may not have access to it. And in today's modern world, because of the internet, we're able to make these books available digitally through our websites and also through publishing channels. So it now has a global reach. So that means people download the free PDFs literally from, I don't know, like more than 200 countries. They download the PDFs, they use it and then every now and then we get emails from people. For some strange, we never know some different part of what is in it. We download what you're just searching online, on books, they're using it. So online, digitally, this has also increased. So it's a great avenue to use. And I will be mentioning it later on when we talk about digital media. Nowadays, all of us can write and all of us can publish online because it's free. You can set up or maybe I say the cost is very minimal. You can set up a blog post or free blog and write, share what you write with the world and people can come and be blessed and ministered too. So the opportunities today are much more because of digital platforms. And we'll share some of those things a little later in a different class. Okay, anybody wants to say anything about print media? I'm going to share and add any thoughts before we go for a break. So let's go for a break and we'll be back in 10 minutes. After a break, we will cover one more topic of radio, television and films. We'll just talk about that and discuss that. I won't take the entire next hour but maybe 20 minutes or 20, 30 minutes. So let's go for a break and be back in 10 minutes. Thank you.