Watching the web - Sermon vodcasts

Creating videos has never been easier, cheaper or more convenient. A piece of equipment worth hundreds of pounds ten years ago is now an essential part of a mobile phone given away for free on some tariffs. High Definition video cameras, creating TV-quality pictures, are now affordable by most churches, leading them to wonder whether they should not simply record the sermon as an audio file, but also as a video.

There are many reasons to consider this. Firstly, downloading video is something many of us are used to doing via YouTube or iPlayer. We are even used to watching entire programmes on computer screens as opposed to our televisions. So far, so sensible.

A-list preachers

There are also some very successful and notable churches who ‘vodcast’ their sermons. Marc Driscoll, John Piper and many others offer videos of their sermons. But these are men who run large churches — whose videos are being downloaded not only by their own sizeable congregations, but by Christians all over the world. Driscoll has joked that they have so many people downloading Mars Hill’s sermons, they’d almost constitute a country.

The churches that provide videos of the sermons of Christian A-listers completely free of charge, commendably, need to be large and wealthy. An hour-long sermon can easily be in excess of 300 MB. Multiply that by a few million downloads a year and you’ve four bandwidth bills running into the hundreds of thousands. Clearly these churches have carefully done their sums and we can be grateful that they bless us in this way by giving free access to their excellent Bible teachers.

But should our own churches follow suit? It is very tempting, given the ease with which it can be done. The only thing most preachers would be afraid of is that they’ll have to make a bit more effort combing their hair, and they might have to buy an extra jacket or two.

Please don’t do it!

Don’t post videos of sermons. I’m serious. Don’t. And the reason is not cost. Your bill won’t be monstrous as no one’s going to download your sermon, not even your own congregation. Wait! Come back off the window ledge. It’s not that the congregation doesn’t love its pastor. It’s just they don’t want to sit in front of a computer for half an hour and watch a static camera shot of a talking head. Regardless of the content and quality of the words spoken, a man preaching for half an hour is truly dreadful television. It’s not just to do with our MTV generation, or our soundbyte culture. It’s a biological reality that the eye requires far more stimulation than the ear to hold its attention. It’s why TV shows are constantly cutting between camera angles. It’s why shots are carefully composed. It’s why cinematographers get paid. It’s why Joel Osteen cleverly employs mutiple cameras to cut from one angle to the next. (This is not just to hide the fact that he is only offering, at best, life-coaching, not Bible teaching). A viewer needs stuff to look at. Someone talking on a screen is not enough because a screen works completely differently from actually being in a room with someone.

Audio is best

Radio is a more intimate medium than the television. It’s something that webpeople frequently forget. There has recently been a quietly muffled podcast revolution, in which hundreds of thousands of people are listening to podcasts, both professional and amateur. A sermon works so much better in this context. One can listen while walking along, driving or even lying in bed. A bit of care and attention get that podcast sermon less crackly, hissing and poorly edited and will go a thousand times further than a videotaped sermon.

James Cary

James Cary is an award-winning comedy writer for TV and radio. For BBC Radio 4, he has written four series of Think the Unthinkable, a sitcom about management consultants, and three series of Hut 33, set in Bletchley Park during WW2. He has also co-written four series of Another Case of Milton Jones. For television, he has written episodes of My Hero and My Family for BBC1 and co-written Miranda for BBC2. He has also written for children’s programmes, including Shaun the Sheep, Gigglebiz and Chucklevision. He is an elder of a church in Fulham, where he lives with his wife and daughter.