Why aesthetics and media are important to Jesus’ mission

Posted by on May 17, 2011 | Comments Off

I went through a phase in seminary when seeing any church that had a well-designed website or lights in their worship area really ticked me off.  My thought would always be along the lines of, “They’re just selling out so they can be cool.”  On the other end of this equation, I’ve almost done a complete 180 on this issue.

Here’s why…

  • We live in a culture that communicates important ideas visually. In our culture if you believe you have a valuable idea, product, or organization, you get a well-done logo, webpage, viral video, or commercial to lend it legitimacy.
  • Outsiders judge the importance of a message by the quality of its presentation. Consider this:  When the whole “Festival Tennessee” fiasco hit Spring Hill, THE FIRST thing that had people thinking it wasn’t legitimate was the 1990′s-ish graphics that represented the project at the presser.  People (correctly) didn’t think the project was serious because the graphics that represented it were poor and outdated.  Think about that for a second: people AUTOMATICALLY ASSUMED the project couldn’t have value behind it for no other reason than it had poor graphic design representing it.  Fascinating.
  • Contending for the gospel. Jude 3 instructs the church to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints”.  One way we “contend for the gospel” in our culture is by having graphics, building aesthetics, presentation, and media that communicate our message (the gospel) is relevant and valuable to our culture.  As silly as this sounds to some, it’s true: when the church has poorly-done or outdated graphics, that communicates to outsiders, “Our message is poor and outdated.“

When the church has poorly-done or outdated graphics, that communicates to our culture, “Our message is poor and outdated.”

We don’t care about these things because we want to be cool.  If that becomes our motivation, we need to repent of worldliness and pride.  We CARE about these things because we believe we have the most relevant, powerful, and important message that will ever be entrusted to Man.  We need a small army of web designers, video editors, and people gifted in graphic design to help us contend for the gospel so that we don’t have a presentation that undermines our message.

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