 Welcome everyone to PC314 Media and Technology. Let's take a moment to pray and then we get started. Could somebody please pray and we'll start. That's great. Dear Heavenly Father, I come to you under the name of Jesus. I thank you for this day. I thank you for the skills and the talent that we have placed in front of us. We have placed in us Lord and God, I pray for the force that we are learning to help us to understand everything that pastor is teaching us so that we can use it wherever we go for the expansion of your kingdom Jesus. I bless all my classmates. We thank you for Pastor Ashish and God we ask for good welfare connection throughout the session. May your name be glorified. May your name be lifted high. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen. Thank you. All right. Just to, last week we did not have class. So just very quickly to recap what we had shared in our very first day of classes. We went through some introduction about just being aware of current trends digitally, what's happening around the world. And of course, we have to stay updated in what's happening. The essence of it is that more and more people are connected online using digital tools. And so if this is actually a great opportunity for us to reach people. At the same time, we must be aware how different generations are relating to technology and also being aware that Gen Z, Gen Alpha, basically those who today would be in their teens and twenties, are a generation, they call them as digital natives. They were born with all of this technology. Around then they grew up with that technology. And so how all of that has impacted their lives. We are very aware of it so we can address those needs as we minister to them. Then we went through lessons, chapters two and three. Very quickly we mentioned that we should be open to using contemporary methods in Christian ministry. That's not something we should be averse towards or run away from. See how we can leverage technology in ways that we can be relevant to people, the ways we can be, it'll help us reach people, it'll help us be very responsive to people. And of course we have to be respectful as people reach out to us. It actually helps us be respectful. That means we can provide information without forcing it on them. Letting people explore at their convenience in a way that they would like to explore and explore the Christian thing. And we also looked at some guidelines just to keep this in mind that as we use contemporary methods, tools, technologies, media, et cetera, some things we must not forget while we are being relevant. We do not compromise in the other message. Our message is still the message of Jesus Christ. It's about the cross and everything the Bible teaches. Our motives must be pure. Our motives must not, for instance, be competing with other people. How is that person using technology? How is that church? Let me try to be better than them. I'll keep your motive pure. You're here to glorify God. You're here to reach people. That motivation is good. We must be blameless in our conduct. So as we are becoming relevant using methods and techniques or technology, our conduct must be beyond reproach. People should not find fault with us in the process. We shouldn't lose sight of godliness and integrity and those kinds of, the core values and principles of the teaching of God's Word. And also we must look for lasting truth. We shouldn't just, our goal is not just to entertain or create some excitement. Our goal is life transformation, bringing people to the Lord, helping people encounter God. Yes, we're going to use contemporary methods and we're going to use tools, media and technology, all of that. But what is our goal, lasting fruit? So that we must not. So having given that background today and I've shared these notes, we're going to talk about, hopefully we'll cover at least three more, three areas. Think about it on how things used to be and how things, the methods in these areas are changing. One is about the ministry of God's Word, about the place of worship and about worship itself. So three things we will try to cover today. And if you don't, we can continue it next week. So when you think about, and I would like to have at the end of each of these chapters, we'll have a little time of discussion. I'd like you to share your thoughts, your observations, what's happening in your part of the world. So we can kind of share ideas and thoughts, right? So we'll do a little bit of discussion and see. So in how the Word of God is ministered, typically in a church service or in other settings, when the way we are ministering God's Word has changed, has changed. One very obvious noticeable thing is in the length of sermons, right? In the early days of the Reformation, we're going back into the 1500s, 1600s, the Puritan movement. This was just right after Martin Luther. Those times sermons were one to three hours long. Can you imagine sitting and listening to somebody, but it was like, hey, this is the Bible. It's like people are getting access to the Word. And so there was no, there's not necessarily some sort of a time limit. You know, you just came and people spoke and you just sat and listened and listened. They just spoke, explaining the Word of God. So generally, that was how, you know, and then during the revivals, again, there was no like, you know, here a 40-minute summary because you preach and God is working. You keep preaching and God is working. And that's it. It could go for more than an hour, sometimes hours when God is moving. Then, you know, we, of course, culturally think we are under change. People wanted to dedicate a certain amount of time in congregational worship. And so then, you know, we had a little bit more structure. And nowadays, you know, generally, I'm not saying every church is like this, but generally a sermon may last for 30 minutes, 45 minutes. And then some other churches, sermons may be very quick, 15 to 20 minutes, finished. The whole service may last one hour. Yeah, it's like almost, you know, very, very fast. People come in, 20 minutes of worship, maybe 30 minutes or 20, 30 minutes sermon, 10 minutes in this language, things over, finished. One hour services over, people are in and out. So everything has changed, right? Sermon itself is 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes, you know. Then in the way the message is being preached, things have changed. Early days, it was worse by worse, expository, exposition of a text. So you take a text and you preach and explain every, you know, every aspect of what's in that text. And you start with biblical truths and then you explain it to the people and how they should apply it in their lives. Now the trend has changed. We start with something people are experiencing, facing or feeling. We start with their need and then we're bringing it back to the Bible. So I'm not saying every sermon is like this, but the general trend is like, okay, you first get their attention. You start talking about things that they can relate to and then you try to bring that to the Bible. So I'm not saying that's the right thing to do, but I'm just saying, you know, this is what we're seeing these days. And also we see that many sermons are very narrative, sometimes lots of illustrations, sometimes even in churches or services, you'll have conversational types of, you know, like people sit and have a conversation and that becomes part of a similar, like a dialogue sermons. So so many different things are happening. And then, you know, of course, a lot of sermons are using drama or visual aids, slides, short videos, all those kinds of things. So, you know, I'm not saying everything is good or everything is bad, but this is what we're seeing, how people are communicating God's word in a typical church service setting. And there's, you know, so many contemporary ways in which people communicate things, also using contemporary examples. And I just put two videos, linked to two videos, you probably will watch one of them. You can find many, many things. But I think this one is summoned by Jensen Franklin. He's using pizza and a pizza box as an example. It's like how Jesus in his day would talk about farming, sheep, coins, oil jar, all those kind of things. Bringing home a message. I think, you know, just using a simple pizza and a pizza box to bring a message or just to help people, the audience understand. It's quite interesting. So it's about three or four messages. Well, let's just, let's listen to this. There's so many that you'd find online. I just, you know, let me just pause here and let me, let's just look at it. Just to, you know, this is an example of how, and I'm not promoting any preacher here. I'm just using this as illustration. So let's just give me a minute. Oops. Okay. Let me share my screen and the audio hope it comes through. Just as an example, right? Not specifically promoting any preacher or anything. Just, okay. I hope you can listen to my audio. Pizza guy showing up at your hotel room tonight. And he's got your pizza, but he doesn't have a box. He's just got it in his hand. And the cheese is oozing down all over his clothes. And it's falling all over the floor. And you don't know where that hand has been. You don't know what he's been doing with that. Come on, somebody. And, and can you imagine, you know, the first question you would ask him if he was standing there saying, hi, did you order this pepperoni pizza? The first question you would ask is where is the box? Because I was expecting the product to come in a vessel. I was expecting the product to come in a box. Well, what I want you to understand is this box is only worth 39 cents. It's not very valuable. It's just, but it takes on a tremendous importance and value because of what is placed in it. I want you to understand, listen to me. The box does not give value to the product. It's the product that gives value to the box. We're just the vessel and Christ is in us and we shouldn't get puffed up when God starts using us. We're just the 39 cent box. What I'm preaching to you is you don't have to be great. You don't have to be super good looking and look like a movie star. You don't have to be super talented, but you do have to be clean and you have to be empty. And if you'll just be clean and be empty, God says if you'll give me a vessel, I'll give you a miracle. I'll give you my oil. I'll give you my purpose. I'll give you my wheel for your life. Okay. So that was just, oops, I mean, I was, yeah, I wanted to say it. So, you know, what do you think about that illustration? I think it's too much for an illustration person. Too much? Too much for a, so many illustrations. So many illustrations. Okay. Any other thoughts? I think it helps us to understand better, get the grab the message easily for the people. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that, you know, he's using an example that is relevant to his audience because it's in North America. So pizza, pizza in a box, cheese, pepperoni pizza. Yeah. They're all very aware of it. They probably, you know, have pizza every week or every other week probably. So it's something that his audience can really understand. And he brings home a very simple point, you know, that we are the pizza box, we are vessels and, you know, God uses us to deliver things. So just a simple example, and that's relevant to his audience. And he's picking something that's from, you know, our time. Just like how Jesus in his day used all kinds of examples from his style of people that they could relate to. He's picking an example and he brings it out. So I think it's, you know, and like this, you know, there's so many, so many examples that you'll find online. And the nice thing about these examples, these things stick in our minds, right? You can always, oh, pizza and pizza box. You remember that. And then you connect it back to, okay, what was the point he mentioned? So it kind of helps make the point stick in our minds. So it does help. Like that, you know, we can see that the kinds of things people are doing, illustrations as, you know, is contemporary. However, you'll also find some examples that, you know, that go way off. You know, I've seen one example, some examples where it just goes off where the attention shifts to the example itself. Exam, you know, for instance, in one situation I saw, you know, people playing ping pong or Tableton is on, you know, Sunday sermon, the sermon there, they have a Tableton table on the stage and they're playing, going back and forth. And that's an illustration for that sermon. In some cases, you know, you know, the pastor will come riding on a bike on the stage. It's kind of, in some cases, it just pushes things a little way too much, maybe. So the point is that the attention has shifted to, oh, what bike was he riding and all that stuff, you know, and that they forget the whole sermon itself. And so we have to be a little careful. The other things we're seeing in preaching is, you know, the focus also, you know, it's also like, in the preaching, the messages have been kind of categorized in how you're preaching. You know, we say, okay, gospel crusade, we preach, the focus is to reach the lost. In church services, mainly we talk about discipleship, we talk about equipping the believer. So there's more solid Bible teaching type of messages. And then there was a trend of seeker sensitive services. So, and this was very popular in the 80s, 90s, 2000s when churches were saying, okay, we'll be seeker sensitive. So it was almost like the Sunday service was like a presentation that would attract people who were speaking or trying to attract people who were just exploring the Christian faith. So the service, the message was very seeker sensitive kind of type of message. Now, I, you know, so there has been a lot of questioning about, and necessarily I think it was a good thing to question this whole thing about seeker sensitive preaching which took place. I think the intent was good, meaning, okay, here are people who are looking for or exploring the Christian faith. So let's try to get them in every Sunday to church, make them want to come back, give them, you know, messages that they can relate to type of thing. But then what happened in the long term was you're preaching Sunday after Sunday. If you're preaching just simple, you know, kind of messages, people who have come to faith, they're not able to grow. So obviously in the church, majority people are people who have committed their life to Christ. But Sunday after Sunday, they're listening to these seeker sensitive type of messages. They're not growing spiritually, they're stagnating. And that came out in a study, I think the study was put out early 2000, I think around 2003. Willow Creek Church in the city in Illinois. They were among the leading churches who started out the seeker sensitive services and movement. But after almost 30 years of doing that, they 20 plus, almost 30 years of doing seeker sensitive services, they did an assessment of the congregation. And they found out that the spiritual formation, the spiritual development of the people was something they lacked. You know, and they put out that study publicly as well. So that was a drawback. And the nice thing was they did that study. They realized where, you know, what was lacking. And so then they had to make course correction and start discipling believers and so on. So that was a drawback of this, this whole type of preaching, preaching messages that were very light and attracting people, but not developing people or growing people. Other delivery styles that we're seeing these days, traditionally we should preach from a pulpit, like a wooden pulpit, a big wooden pulpit. You stand behind and you preach. And nowadays, you know, sometimes you see people pulpit, sometimes you don't see pulpit. There are various ways in which the preacher engages the audience by getting them to speak back or participate in the service itself. For good or worse, better or for worse, I don't know, but the attire of preachers has also changed. You know, there were times when people were something that was more formal and now it's gone to places where preachers are wearing, you know, all kinds of things. And the attire is often so. But that's good or bad. I don't know. And so there's also the change in the physical place of preaching. We'll talk about it in the next chapter. But what I want to think about is, you know, there's all these changes that have taken place in the way the Word of God is being preached, right? In the length of the message and how the message is being presented, how the truth is being presented to people and there are kinds of illustrations being used in how the preacher or the pastor, the preacher himself is presenting, coming before the people. All these changes are taking place and it's happening everywhere. It's all over the world in the Christian world, these changes thing. So I want us to just take a little bit of time to discuss, you know, what are your thoughts and what do you feel is good and what do you feel is like, hey, it's not good and we should avoid those kinds of pitfalls. I just want to open for discussion so that we can exchange our thoughts and so on. Okay. All right. So I see a question there from John Paul. Could you share some examples of Seeker-sensitive services, examples of topics? Now, I haven't listened to too much of these Seeker-sensitive services. I'm only read about it because I think the pioneering church in this was Willow Creek Church led by Pastor Bill Heibles. This was back, like I think from starting in the 70s on. But, and I've never attended one, you know, I've not gone to one of the services to attend it myself, but certainly by reading, the whole service was geared towards those who are very, this explore the Christian faith. So it would be a short-term worship, but more of a presentation type of worship, maybe good singing by the choir and so on. The messages would be on themes and topics that these people could relate to. Now, some of the bad examples I've heard of in this whole thing was, you know, Pastor's creatures using segments of, you know, the latest movie, the latest, or maybe even the latest newest book, not necessarily by Christian Autumn, just generally, you know, any movie that's, you know, or any, or even a song that would be, you know, trending at that time, using segments of that as a way to start up the message, as a way to get the attention of the audience and from there trying to present something that is biblical scriptural, right? Or even using these segments of movie segments in their messages or sometimes using immediate needs of the people, you know, what are they going through, you know, maybe trauma or so basically taking the felt needs, but using that as a topic and not necessarily going into some sort of Bible study, but just pointing them, you know, to Jesus. So you could start off with something that's happening in the culture, whether it's entertainment, music, movies. So you could start off with something that's going on with social, society, social matters. You could start off with something that are the felt needs of the people. They're going through, you know, whatever felt needs and then bring in, just point them to Jesus, right? Or point them to one or two scriptures in the word of God. So that way you're addressing something that they can relate to immediately as they come into service and then you're pointing them to one or two scripture. That would be, you know, kind of how they would approach this. The good side, I mean, so I will allow us to discuss that. So what do you think about, so I hope I answered your question, John, that's giving you the answer. So I just want us to discuss here in the preaching and the ministry of the word, you know, we just tried to point out several different changes that are taking place in the contemporary church. So we're trying to use contemporary methods. We're trying to be relevant. We're trying to be contemporary. And so all these changes are being made globally. We're seeing it everywhere. What are the pros and cons, you know, good and the bad? And what are some things we should be very careful about in all of these changes? I just like us to discuss, like, love to hear your thoughts. So feel free to share, please. Collins, please go. So I think the... John, okay. Yeah. So I think the usage of illustrations, the purpose of having pulpit or not pulpit, I think that is quite relatable to people at this time and age, but the thing is when it shifts away the attention of people to the word and when it reaches a point that, for example, one of the things that we discussed regarding the attire of the preacher and a lot of discussion goes on what kind of brand he is using, what costly it is, how costly it is and so on. So that actually diverts people from listening to the truth of the word of God, I believe. Okay, good. Collins, do you want to share something? Yes, Pastor. I think just literally we are here just to avoid the mistakes that many preachers have, especially those who come to minister when they are not trained, properly trained, or they not attend the right university or the right college. But again, I would think that there are three things, two things a person should look at. One should be, you should always be true to the word of God. You should always have your stick here to remain true to the word of God. Number two would be understand your audience. There might be an example that does not work where I stay, but when it can work where we should avoid cut and paste, because if you only copy and paste whatever you see, it might be offensive to some other people. Lastly, but not least, you should always never take anything for granted. We must prepare. We must prepare and listen to the Holy Spirit as we prepare to meet those people. I would like to put a full stop there, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Good, good. Good points. Good points. Anyone else as what are the pros and cons, what are some of the things we should be careful of? Go ahead, Divya. Thank you, Besta. I think with basically with pastors trying to reach out to a large number of people, they tend to mostly, I think, focus on the seeker sensitive kind of kind of an approach. Nothing wrong, but as more people are reached out, as you were rightly saying, like the spiritual growth of those who are already committed, already committed believers, it is actually stunted. Yeah, we have experience being part of the church as churches. So I wouldn't say reaching out to a large number of people is a bad thing. It is a good thing. But at the same time, the spiritual growth of people are challenged. Also, you feel like a drop in the sea. You don't really have a kind of a fellowship because maybe the crowd is changing. The crowd is moving. So maybe you're seeing a different set of people all the time. So that's another one of the negative aspects of trying to reach out to a large number of people. And also what I could say is the attention sometimes is much on the person who is speaking, you know, the pastor who is speaking about his life and we had like situations where they would even show their family, you know, pics of their homes and their yard and all that. So I feel it does. I'm not sure where the focus is at that kind of in those situations. Yeah, and also we have seen kind of the church becomes very in those scenarios. There will be life groups, of course, where you get to connect, but it becomes very especially if it is an international kind of diverse kind of a church. It becomes like a particular nationality or a particular community just come together into a life group that may or may not help for the spiritual growth of each one. So these are some, you know, advantages that we have observed. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, even yeah, I think there is a shift of focus that happens when more people are, you know, getting into and the concerns of people, but especially not in churches, the older generation, the elderly, people who have the wisdom and the, you know, they have the experience, they are less heard. So even if the, they try to, you know, do a kind of try to support in ways of prayer and, you know, giving godly counsel, they might not be heard of much. So what happens in the end, it has caused disintegration of the church slowly like one life group, maybe the elderly people, the life group that they were having, they can completely, you know, stop coming to the church. And it causes the disintegration of the church because people are looking for places where they can grow. And they are, you know, their concerns are heard. So yeah, yeah, that's something that we have observed. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing. Thank you. Anyone else? What are the pros and cons with these changes that we are seeing in the ministry of the word? You know, so many, so many, I think there's so many, it impacts people in so many ways. Any other thoughts? I would love to talk about the pros. I haven't even, instead of these changes looking back in my place, I haven't seen any change. Still, there are preachers, even though when the pastor says 45 minutes, they go one end of ours and we are all just wondering when the preacher is going to end this. And I feel this length of sermon has changed over time. It's actually a good thing. Because that, like, Sundays or the days, people get dressed so you can't keep preaching for two hours, two hours. And they feel, and the people, they feel like if the pastor says 40 minutes, I should preach one hour. That shows I'm a better preacher. That's the mindset of the people of some people over there. And the format of teaching hasn't changed in some places yet. They still don't have any illustrations. And even last time when I went back, I see the pastors gossiping about others on the pulpit and all this. So I wish they could have little change in the format. It could have some specific orders, specific topic, not just coming and speaking something random. And an illustration actually helps. I wish it happens where it's not happening. Because growing up as a young girl in Christ, I look for illustrations whenever I preach a preach. Even that helps me better growing up. Some of the illustration keeps staying in my mind because I've seen it. Something about this sheen illustration, I think it actually helps. Even when you're teaching about illustration, I remember various illustrations in my mind what I already saw. And even pulpit, it's still some places, they still prefer it. Even pulpit should be there. And when I grew up, there are times when I unfortunately went and stood near the pulpit and it becomes a big sin. Only the pastor has to stand there. And I think even these things should be changed. It's not about the pulpit. It's not about that it's about the message they preach. So I think even that's a good change that we have brought. It's okay if a pulpit is there, if a pulpit is not there, it doesn't matter. It's not about the pulpit anymore. And attires of features, various churches, it's always a controversy. The attires, especially when it comes to women, it becomes very, very heavy. Like everything is being noticed whether they are putting the dupatta over them or not, whether they're covering their heads or not. All this becomes very important. And to an extent, even now when people start doing it, then it becomes what's the price of their salary? Everything comes into focus. I think it's all a good change that we have brought. All this doesn't matter. It's about the message that we preach and I think people should start realizing it. Some changes are good, but the main thing should not be changed. I don't think people holding on to the pulpit, holding on to the attire is going to bring any good spiritual changes in their life. It's just the tradition that they keep following and they feel something holy about it, which obviously I don't prefer. When a pulpit becomes holy, when an attire becomes holy, I think that's where the mistakes of the wrong teachings come from. It's not about the pulpit. There are pastors who carry their pulpit because they feel like something anointing. They don't trust in the anointing that God has given them. So I think some of these changes are good that gives good people a wider perspective. Like, oh, it's not about the pulpit, it's not about the church, it's not about the timings or anything, but it's about the word. So from my side, I've seen this approach as you preach. Thank you for sharing. Very interesting. We had Divya's perspective being in a contemporary church and what has the impact of a lot of emphasis on Sikha sensitive, etc. And then we have Divya's perspective being in a traditional church, how change is very urgently needed. So you've got both ends that we share. That's very interesting. Let's look at John's comment there. As the attention span of people has reduced due to the invasion of media, I think it's good to have 30 to 40 minutes duration for the word. Yeah, I think being sensitive to the attention span, how much of attention of the people that we can keep, 30, 40 minutes is reasonable. It's good. We have to be mindful of that. I think so let's try to summarize this. So the essence of what we want to take away is change is good. If it is serving the purpose of God, advancing God's kingdom, bringing God's word in a way that's relevant and meaningful to the people we administering. And I think the essence of what's being shared is we need to stay true to the word of God. Bring the word of God in a way that's relevant to the audience. But focus on, you know, don't lose sight of while we want to reach new people. We also have to focus on the spiritual growth of people and the community and all those things that need to be built. The spiritual needs of the people must be addressed from the word of God in a very healthy way. So we have to do that. And while we make changes, we must not bring attention to ourselves. So it shouldn't be about, you know, what fancy clothes I'm wearing or what I'm wearing. In fact, if we can be there on, you know, as preaching the word, when you're preaching the word, be there in such a way that people don't want to spend it, pay attention to what you're wearing. It's like, yeah, okay, it's all very simple. Just listen to the word. That's a good thing, I think, and the focus becomes on, okay, this is God's word. Focus on encountering God, encountering His presence, fellowshiping with each other. You know, keep the main things as the main thing. I think that's something we should keep the focus on. And using illustrations, like you said, as long as you're getting the point across, sure, it's very helpful. For people to remember, a practical application. How do you apply the word in that context, in that place, you know, like the columns were saying it will be different in different parts of the world. But how are people in that place going to apply it relevant to them? Don't copy paste, because something in one part of the world may not be relevant in another part of the world. So we have to be very careful. All right. So let's, we'll pause here. Thank you for sharing. I appreciate each month sharing your thoughts. We'll go for a break. When we come back, there are two more things we'll talk about. One is the change of the place and how the congregation is assembling. Again, very interesting to see how that has changed, how that has evolved. And then we will talk about worship, how worship has changed, you know, from the days of the early church, or we could even say from the days of the Bible, Bible times to where worship is today, it's such a huge change. And we have to ask, you know, is the change good or not? And what are some of the things we have to be careful of? So we'll discuss those two things after we come back. So let's be back in about 15 minutes, 11 o'clock, and we'll pick up on those two topics. Thank you.