Why use visual media in the church?
I came across an interesting blog post by Stephen Proctor over at WorshipVJ about the reasons for using visual media in worship. You can read his post here, but a few things he mentions NOT to use visual media in worship for:
- Entertainment
- Personal satisfaction of the visual enthusiast
- Keeping young people interested
- Because everyone else is doing it
His whole list is a bit amusing, but also very true. I like to think of the visuals as a tool to enhance the worship experience. For the congregation, the praise and worship can be a very personal, intense experience – between each person and God. Our goal as a video team is to eliminate distractions and become “invisible”, but at the same time I think using visuals serves to even enhance the worship experience.
One more thing I’ll point out is that we all learn one of three ways - Auditory, Kinesthetic, and Visual (yes, you are one of those). These also translate over to how we experience life on a personal level. For many people just hearing the music is enough to move them. For others, they need to lift their hands or move around, be active and participate. And the last group, those who experience life visually, are especially moved by an appropriate visual aid to their worship experience.
Oh, and they all need to know the words in order to sing. :)
Joel Ohman said:
Nice job on this post - especially in pointing out the differences in the ways we learn.
July 15th, 2009 at 11:35 pm