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Much like online church, I’ve got questions about video teaching. These questions are not about whether or not video teaching can be helpful, and I’m not really worried that video teaching substantially hurts overall community. My biggest question is: what does a church’s choice to use video in place of a sermon say about it’s value of teaching in the first place?

I worry that it communicates to the church that there’s a certain quality of teaching we need to have, and if it can’t come from someone in the community, it’s a totally interchangeable choice to go elsewhere for good content. I worry about what that communicates to those in the community with teaching gifts. How will those gifts be recognized, encouraged and fostered?

I also think that using video teaching on an ongoing basis continues to make sermons seem like the only way we can learn as a community. In reality, I think there’s hundreds of different ways our churches could approach learning. I think that when we roll the video week after week, we communicate that not only do we believe we don’t have anybody that can teach at an acceptable level, but that we absolutely MUST have a sermon, so we’ll use video if we have to.

My thought is:  if you don’t feel comfortable having somebody get up and give a sermon, don’t. Traditional teaching and preaching can be extremely valuable in many, many settings. But I’m just not sure its an indispensable part of what we do.

What if churches who find themselves without a pastor/teacher for a short time decide not to use video teaching in the interim, but instead use that season to dream and imagine how they could organize their gatherings without a central communicator? Couldn’t this be a just as equally exciting experiment?