Video Church

At a certain size, more pastors are needed and pastors need to specialize into specific roles (preaching, caring, teaching, worship, community, outreach, etc). While every pastor includes elements of most of those things, some will spend more time in certain elements or with certain groups of people than others.

 

I've never heard of pastoring by video like that. How often does it happen?

Our church has about 4-5000 members between two morning services. There are about 7 pastors on staff, all with their own duties (education and missions, youth, evangelism, etc) but available to anyone who needs them, plus about 30 different Sunday school classes, each led by either an ordained pastor or elder.

 

In video venue churches, the "pastoring" isn't done by video, only the Sunday morning preaching. Each satelite campus will have its own campus pastor to interact with that congregation. In a church large enough to have video venue satelites, the senior/teaching pastor is going to have very limited contact with the majority of attenders anyway, so the senior/teaching pastor is not doing the day to day "shepherding of the flock" that you would normally think of when you say pastor.

 

As a missionary in China, I sometimes attended a Communist Chinese Christian church. The Sunday morning preaching was done by video. The congregation numbered at least 5000 and was located in a building that had five floors, and there was a monstrous television screen located in on each floor where the video feed came in. As an American I was always given a place of honor, that is I didn't had to sit behind post, or wait until the crowd cleared out to leave. While this was all very interesting I only saw one person except the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal savior while attending that church. I went perhaps five times.

 

You have to know who it is you're trying to reach. The very large churches in larger cities seem to be doing pretty well with Video Venue, but I really doubt it would work here in Arkansas.

The one church that I'm somewhat familiar with is Fellowship Church in Grapevine, TX (Ed Young Jr is pastor) I have a friend on staff there and I got to visit with one of their satelite campus pastors. He pastors an inner city campus that is about 30 miles from Grapevine. It's an entirely different type crowd from what is at the main church, and a crowd that would probably never attend the main church. For them, it's all about fishing, and each campus is one more hook in the water. At that campus, the congregation is totally different - racially, socio-economically, just about any way you can divide people up, they're different. At other campus' the crowd make-up will be very similar to the main church, but because of convenience the people are more faithful. For example, they have a campus in Mesquite that I believe runs around 400. Those are people that like Fellowship Church, they like Ed Young's preaching, but because of distance probably would only attend once or twice a month. But now with a video venue church in Mesquite, they get basically the same service and they will attend three or four times a month.

It's like what Rick Warren said, "It takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people." So if it works where you are, go for it. If not, let it go on by.

 

Mima,
As you do not list any Baptist Church in your profile we ask you not to post in Baptist forums such as this, but in the non-Baptist forums only. Thank you for your cooperation.
DHK

 

Thanks for the link, Tom. Very interesting. I agree with what someone named Brett wrote. The whole concept of video church seems to emphasize pastors as polished "professional pulpiteers" in a way that is foreign to the Scriptures.

About 15 or 20 years ago, I wrote an article on the subject of worship and modern technology. In all I said, the main point was this -- we need to think deeply about whether the acceptance and integration of modern technology will change the nature of the gathered assembly. I think in the case of video church it does, at least from what it should be.

What if we change this "video church" format up a bit? Make this a slightly "poorer" mega-church. Instead of them getting the pastor on live satellite feed, he records his sermons and mails them out for his "satellite churches" to gather and listen to. Do we feel the same, or does this change how we think of it?

I think there are a number of issues that we have not "thought through" concerning our technological advancements and how to best use them. Perhaps this idea of "video church" could have a temporary place in a circumstance where that was the best that could be done for a time (e.g., people who gather with no one to teach them). But it is a poor substitute to continue when we can do better.

 

In some regions where there is a roving pastor shared among several churches separated by large distances, can the pastor really "shepherd" all the churches or are they just video preachers without the video?

 

Actually, I don't think many are doing a live satellite feed. Too much chance for problems, plus it restricts you time greatly. For instance, what if there is a problem at the satelite campus and they start five minutes late. Fellowship has multiple services each weekend, and what they do is video tape their Saturday evening sermon and play it on Sunday morning at the satelite campus'.

This is pretty much a tool for the mega-churches due to the fact that the equipment needed to make a high quality recording is not cheap. My friend at Fellowship told me that the High Definition tapes that they record on cost them $125 each, and they are only used once.

Again, it's another hook in the water that the bigger churches can use, and the more hooks you have in the water the more fish you catch.

 

I know a church that is about 6 years old and has planted about 15 new chruches mostly starting with a video of the pastor's sermon at the main church until enough people get together and they can get a pastor to come. It has worked exceptionally well.

 

guitarpreacher, thanks for the explanation. I had the impression that many of these situations were live satellite feed. That fact doesn't change my opinion, but informs me better on what is commonly being practiced.

In light of these new facts, I also did not explain myself well concerning the "poorer mega-churches". I had in mind (but didn't write it) that this "poor" mega-church was recording the sermons on $2 cassette tapes and sending them out for the "satellite church" to listen to.

 

Well, there are lots of churches doing this, so there's probably a lot of different methods being used. I talked with one pastor who was considering it and they were going to try live streaming over the internet.

Fellowship in Grapevine is the only one that I know much about, and that's not a lot. I do know that their video capabilities are about as good as any tv studio around, and the video that goes out to the satelite campus is as good as it could possibly be.