PRESENTATION ADDICTION | Sally Morgenthaler

Recently, I taught at a large conference hosted by a seeker church. (No, it’s not the one you’re probably thinking of, but it’s a mega-church just the same.) I wasn’t speaking right away, so I took some time to get into the “zen” of the conference…literally, watching the main-session production from the media booth in the balcony, and observing the audience’s response…my favorite activity.

Let me describe the scene from the opening minutes of the main session. In a word, this was big-stage, big-event stuff…complete with future-esque digital animation and MTV-worthy, custom-made music videos…all splashed onto two gargantuan corner screens while a vocalist performed live, front and center stage. As you might expect, every sound cue was pre-rehearsed and perfect, the mix, surround-sound best. The media booth itself took up the entire balcony, sporting a monster mixing board 50 channels wide and digital video equipment rivaling that of a minor Hollywood studio. The stage sets were professionally designed and intricate, moving on and off with electronic precision.

Four-hundred-plus attendees were clearly in “wow” mode, sitting in unmistakable awe, number after number. It was only natural that many attendees would start wondering how this fifteen-hundred-or-so member congregation pulled off this kind of stuff. Sure enough, at the first break, I heard just such rumble at the entryway espresso bar, including the predictable query, “Do they really do this every, single Sunday?”, i.e., was it just one big “blow-your-hair-back”, “knock-your-socks-off” experience every week? What I found out later from congregation leaders was telling: paid professionals and arts teams had been slaving away at this two-day glitz-fest for ten months. No matter. Most conference attendees had figured out in the first few minutes that their congregations would not be able to go home and even come close to duplicating what they’ve just seen, given ten months or twenty.

So, the question is, why host a conference like this? I’ll give the conference hosts the benefit of the doubt. It’s not necessarily a bad thing for Christians to show each other what’s possible. But here’s a question I will put to you - one that, after my plenary address at this event, was put to me privately by a couple of this congregation’s young leaders: just because something’s possible – just because we can - should we?

I have written before about the interactivity of early Christian worship. I have also explored the rise of an essentially interactive culture in post-millennial America. What follows are excerpts from two cultural sources, one Christian, the other not. In both sources, the practice of communicating to people in an interactive age is the issue. Bottom line, whether you’re using a lecturn or a hi-tech production to communicate the gospel, you’re not connecting.

Consider this recent article from the Associated Press: Death by Lecture – a delightful glimpse into the work of plucky communications practitioner, Sharon Bowman:

“The clinical name is the reticular activator — a part of the brain about the size of the end of your pinky finger. Sharon Bowman calls it the “brain secretary.” “Hold up your pinky,” Bowman shouts to two dozen court administrators at a recent training seminar at the National Judicial College. “Say it with me — brain secretary,” she says, her bracelets jangling as she adjusts the glasses perched atop her head.

It’s a key part of the lesson from the former Lake Tahoe-area school teacher turned corporate training leader who is attempting something many consider more difficult than brain surgery. She’s trying to teach Fortune 500 executives, court clerks and college professors to push training manuals aside and teach their students and co-workers in compelling ways that keep their minds from wandering.

Or as one of her book titles suggests, Preventing Death By Lecture. The “brain secretary” puts the main brain on autopilot while doing a repetitive chore, such as driving a familiar route to work, Bowman says. It is an enemy of good teaching. “The brain secretary is programmed to take care of the routine. It says ‘Been there, done that. I’ve got it covered. Your mind can take a hike,’” she says. If a dog darts in front of the car, the brain secretary “bangs on the door of the thinking brain,” which clicks into gear. “You have to keep the learner’s brain active,” she tells the students at the Judicial College.

And so she flings a rubber ball at one participant. Or urgently seeks an answer to a trivia question from another. Or briefly flips on an overhead projector. Next, Bowman is off and running. Up and down the aisles. Flipping on projectors. Drawing on easels. Throwing things. “Move around. Ask a question. Show a video. Use a prop. Talk softer — which is a hard one for me,” Bowman said. “Do anything that will set off the brain secretary,” she said. “Learning is directly proportional to the amount of fun they are having.”

All learning IS experience,” Bowman says. “Everything else is just information. If I want them to HEAR it, I talk. I want them to LEARN it, they talk.”
“Hold up your pinky. Say it with me…reticular activator…”

If educators know that lecturing doesn’t work and interaction is THE key to actual learning, not just information dissemination, what does that mean for the way we do church? Replace the lecturn with a show? For the past twenty-five years, church growth pundits have been touting just that. Author Rex Miller, however, has a much different view. Creator of The Millennium Matrix, Rex underscores the inadequacy of entertainment in a world screaming for one-on-one engagement. He spends much time analyzing the New Experience culture characterized by such wide-ranging venues as The Holocaust Museum, Krispy Crème, the Chicago Children’s Museum, Improv Theater, Blue Man Group, Whole Foods, and Circue du Soleil. Miller takes what he has learned and gives us this handy list of broadcast culture/digital culture comparisons:

REX MILLER’S BROADCAST vs. DIGITAL CULTURE
From polished prepackaged events to unmediated, hands-on experiences
From Main Event to Meaningful Encounters
From Product to Process
From Knowing to Doing
From visual language to multi-media
From the Mall to Sanctuaries
From chasing the new thing to reframing and layering the past

Miller goes deeper and also helps us to understand the main tasks of each of the Western communication cultures of the past six hundred years, and what those tasks meant as they were brought into worship.

• Oral culture’s role, Miller explains, was to protect the cohesion of the community. Here, worship is
• Print culture – the culture of the Reformation and the Enlightenment – explored the limits of human understanding. In this world, worship more meeting than sacred activity; an orderly reinforcement of the principles of faith and presentation of the gospel.
• Broadcast or entertainment culture (from the onset of television through the early 1990s) zeroed in on the internal world of the individual, focusing the viewer on the experience of the moment. In this world, worship is an attraction, a stage-driven presentation of the gospel.
• Digital culture (or the New Experience Culture) expands the individual’s experience back into the world at large, offering both knowledge and experience on a much broader level. Connecting past and future to the present, the digital world connects self to others, and explores new paths of personal creativity and participation. In this world, worship is more gathering than production; it is crafted collaboratively; and it is an interactive, intimate, multi-sensory, improvisational, immersive, and mystical engagement in sacred space.

I exchanged a few e-mails with Rex recently, and told him that I was concerned that the broadcast mode he describes so well in The Millennium Matrix was still proliferating in a culture that had moved beyond it. Sort of like stepping into this big production conference, while backstage, twenty-something staff members couldn’t wait to talk to me about engaging people more radically and using media interactively.

In his last letter to me, here is Rex’ most recent take on the regrettable staying power of church-as-entertainment:

“Our kids are growing up with game simulation which is a form of ritual reenactment.  When they come to church they'll be looking for something more interactive and symbolic than my generation who was happy to feel the buzz of the main event. Unfortunately, the broadcast folks still have another 10 - 15 year run because all of the Boomers will be there and those over 40 represent 91% of this country's total assets.  $9.trillion.  So money talks.  We'll need to find those older leaders that get it, nurture the emerging leaders who need some validation and then wipe the dust off of our feet with the rest.  Some of the worship leaders out there get that worship has to become more interactive, but they don't have the "power."  Interactivity in the church may still be ahead of the curve, but I am finding leaders on a one-on-one basis that are tired of the treadmill and want something deeper, more significant and lasting.  The problem is, broadcast is an addiction like television.  It is a sugar rush and we have a hypo-glycemic church…”

And then he gave me a checklist for leaders wanting to carve a way forward into the interactive, digital age…i.e., those folks hardest to bring into the church in 2006:

Rex Miller’s Preparing for a Digital Mindset checklist:
Study and understand the digital medium
Engage the senses
Access multiple media
Reclaim past paradigms (master artists)
Offer a safe venue to experiment
Practice interactive skills
Rehearse and create as a whole team