Lighting Is the Answer?

If only I had known this 30 years earlier…

I was flipping through one of the many monthly mailings that come to our church. It’s a magazine about worship filled mostly with advertisements for companies peddling all sorts of worship-related “equipment,” from soundboards to digital screens to new sanctuary architecture.

One ad caught my attention.

Lighting is your answer!

The importance of lighting in a sermon is often forgotten or overlooked. With the right lighting and the right lighting console, your sermon can INSPIRE, MOVE, and encourage your audience to BELIEVE in your message! Our lighting consoles are feature packed, easy to operate, and priced to fit your budget!

How stupid I have been all these years to pour hours of prayer and preparation into sermons – what a waste of time! All I really needed was the right lighting to create a sort of halo effect around me, and then, perhaps when I’m warming to my theme, to add drama and excitement. All these years I’ve trusted the Holy Spirit to take my best efforts, bless them, and shape how they are received. What an oaf! What I really needed was good lighting!

Why, with the money we fritter away on mission work, education, and staff to lead our ministry, we could have purchased world-class lighting consoles that would actually INSPIRE, MOVE, and encourage people to BELIEVE!

All sarcasm aside, I’ve been exposed to the theology implicit in ads like this all my life. It traces back to the work of evangelist Charles Finney nearly 200 years ago.

A leader of the “Second Great Awakening” that produced the so-called “burned-over district” here in upstate New York, Finney believed that every means possible should be used to push people toward recognizing their need for Christ, including carefully developed strategies during worship that would stir emotions. The 21^st century version of those measures is the heavy (and expensive!) use in some churches of state-of-the-art audio and video technology (as well as stage lighting) to manipulate worshipers toward an emotional response to whatever is being said or sung in the front of the sanctuary.

I’m not opposed to using technology in worship. If I were, I would eschew microphones and speakers that enable everybody to hear what’s going on, not to mention the amps that bring sound to certain instruments. Digital technology is also responsible for the versatile keyboard in our sanctuary, as well as our ability to project images that help illustrate a theme. Nothing is wrong with technology per se – human invention develops to meet needs. But overused technology inevitably gets in the way of our humanity. In worship, it can undercut the very essence of our gathering.

For me, church ministry has always been a matter of sharing and living the gospel. Our calling is to be the church – to embody the community that Jesus formed and gave to the world – and then see what happens. For 30 years, I have been amazed again and again at how God moves among us, weaving together communities of faith that – sometimes in spite of ourselves – manifest the presence of Christ. The deep impact that loving, caring, bearing congregations have on their members and on people who benefit from their ministries is far more consequential than the momentary ecstasy fabricated by the right combination of audio and visual effects.

More specifically, I do not believe that the purpose of sermons is to manipulate people’s feelings about anything, though good sermons engage both the mind and the heart by effectively relating biblical teachings to real life. The purpose of sermons is to enlighten us about what the scriptures teach and what the Christian life looks like. Of course, good sermons are also designed to persuade hearers to embrace the values, disciplines, and behaviors toward which the scriptures point us. But persuasion respects the freedom and dignity of the hearer. Manipulation is an effort to psychologically control others. It violates both freedom and dignity.

God does not manipulate us, so why on earth would God want us to use manipulative strategies on each other? There is no need to fabricate a spiritual experience in order to lure people to the gospel. I have had rapturous experiences of God that have brought me to both tears and laughter. I have felt the Spirit of God stirring deep in my soul. I have also been privileged to hear others give testimony to wonderful experiences of grace in their own lives. All of these transcendent moments have been pure gift – never the result of any human attempt to make them happen.

Artificial “lighting” is not the answer. The only light we need is already given. The true light that enlightens everyone has come into the world and lives among us, calling us to be light for others.

©2016 by J. Mark Lawson

Comments

[Elaine]

Very astute, as always,Pastor Mark. I love your perspective on religion and on our savior, Jesus.