Technology should be as transparent as possible. If someone comes to a church and we set them up to think, “What a great sound system!”, the sound system has failed to do its job. Or an air conditioner. Sure, the building should be cool but the moment it brings attention to itself it’s failed to do its job. Frankly, it’s the same thing with preaching. If someone comes to a church and we’ve packaged the preaching to have the effect of, “What a great speaker! What a wonderful personality! I want my life to be like his!”, then the preacher has failed to do his job which is to preach the scriptures and call attention to God. That doesn’t mean that a preacher can’t have a personality or be funny, etc., but that those things are not the goal – they’re the God-given means by which he communicates the word of God.

Technology makes a great servant but a horrible master.

See Quentin Schultze’s book, “High-Tech Worship?” for more. Schultze is a philosopher and professor who thinks through many of these things.

For instance, instead of using video in church that looks like it was taken with a camcorder from the 1990′s, is it wrong for the church to use a high definition signal to make the lyrics, colors, words, etc look professional? Or, to switch it around, is it wrong for a church to have a symphony level audio system that may attract more visitors when that money could be used for other programs or missions, etc?

I’m not leading, I genuinely am asking myself these questions. I often struggle with the place where the justification of such things (if we offer more, we get more and therefore have more to share for missions, etc) meets my more radical side that says maybe we’d be better off with 50 person churches and no A/V. In the end, I fear there is a fine line between these things enhancing worship and distracting people from it.