Being Effective

Years ago, when I was around 8, my church starting putting their sermons on the radio.  AM radio.  On Sundays at noon, or 6:30AM.   I thought this was awesome as a kid.  I bragged to my friends about it.  Looking back, I question it.


I wonder- how effective was the church putting their sermons on the air?  Did it reach the lost?  It certainly didn’t provide the option of church members who couldn’t attend service to hear it (unless they were just sitting at home, and the church made cassette’s of each service for that).  Was it a pride thing?
Don’t get me wrong- I know that using AM radio for services can be effective.  But it can also be unaffective.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about, today’s equivalent would be televising a church service on local news channels. 

Again- I think any way the church can broadcast the gospel and interact with its community is a great thing.  The problem lies when a church does it not for the benefit of the lost, or the benefit of its members, but for the benefit of its pride. 

We are called to go out into the community.  And we want the message of God’s love to reach as far as it possibly can.  We just have to be careful that we do it in a way that reflects on God, not us.  Which means we don’t need banners at the bottom of the screen promoting our latest book, speaking tour dates, ticketing prices, or addresses to send money to.  We need to focus on the glorification of God.

When you read this post- I hope you don’t read a person slamming AM radio, sermon broadcasting, or anything like that.  This isn’t a post about how churches are doing this poorly, just a post about the fact that we need to be cautious. 

We as the Church need to take advantage of every form of technology that we can find useful.  The key word there is useful.  Even though 3D technology exists, there really is no need for it in ‘Church Broadcasting’.  Its not useful.