Sunday January 1, 2006
Communication models shape both church and world
Once in a while, a book shows me a new way to think.
Many books offer memorable stories, brilliant writing, vivid illustrations. But few authors change my perception of the world I live in. Marshall McLuhan did it. So did Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Jared Diamond, and now Rex Miller, with The Millennium Matrix (Jossey Bass, 2004).
Miller has a 25-year career in sales and executive management. He\’s a communications consultant with degree in theology. That gives him a unique perspective.
He worked for a telephone company while they were changing from analog to digital switching. The change in technology forced the corporation to reprogram itself. “Companies were going through a major transition in structure, culture,” Miller said in an interview, “and that was expressed in the way they designed space and handled their work flows.”
The experience led him to study the ripple effects of communications technology – in this book, using religious institutions as case studies.
Four communication models
Miller suggests that we have had four over-arching communication technologies: oral, print, broadcast, and digital. Each creates its own cultural and social patterns.
In an oral culture, for example, a few people become the keepers of the story. Everyone knows the story; only a few are entrusted to preserve it and pass it on.
Inevitably, the social structure becomes hierarchical. The story – and the authority associated with it – filters down from the top.
Liturgically, the story is re-enacted, whether around a campfire in the desert or around the altar in a Gothic cathedral. Art and architecture use soaring arches, stained glass windows, and abundant symbols to invite people to re-experience the story symbolically.
In print, power moves from the keeper of the story to the story itself, printed on a page.
Because text is linear, word after word inexorably fixed in place, logic and reasoning become dominant. There\’s little room for intuition, for innovation, for divergence.
The social structure flattens. Because the story is available to everyone, the words replace the priest as the authority.
Architecturally, the pulpit displaces the altar. Preaching becomes central. Churches become leaner, less ornate, so as not to distract from the word.
Like musicians playing a Beethoven symphony, the goal is to follow the doctrinal score without error.
Technically, the broadcast era flowered to its fullest with radio and television.
Broadcast depends on performance. A charismatic leader becomes crucial – like Billy Graham or Johnnie Carson. The congregation becomes an audience.
The flow is one way, outward.
In the broadcast model, churches – especially megachurches — look like theatres or television studios. Technology abounds, with projectors, sound systems, rehearsals.
Musically, the broadcast church resembles a brass band – a blast of power that numbs critical analysis and seeks an emotional response.
Finally, says Miller, there\’s the interactive digital model. Information flows both ways. Like Wikipedia (an on-line encyclopedia which anyone can add to), the value lies not in any one person\’s knowledge, but in the collective range of responses.
In the digital age, Miller suggests, worship will resemble a small jazz combo. The quality of music depends on each player\’s contribution.
Varied reactions
I find Miller\’s analysis of the digital model weaker than his chapters on older technologies. But that\’s a minor quibble. His matrix gives me a handle for understanding the diverse ways people react.
Earlier this year, for example, a group of us met to discuss Tom Harpur\’s Pagan Christ. Harpur argues that the gospel accounts of Jesus were fabricated from older legends and myths – stories that contain profound truths without necessarily being literally true. Harpur focuses mainly on Egyptian sources; he could equally well have used Mesopotamian or Greek mythology.
People reacted strongly.
Some turned helplessly to their minister. They wanted the keeper of their tradition to sort it out for them. That\’s the oral model.
Others got angry. Harpur\’s theories contradicted what they had learned and taken for granted, all their lives. They cited doctrine, or quoted favourite verses – the print model.
A few saw Harpur\’s text as a performance (on paper, admittedly), a masterful display of research and presentation – the broadcast model.
Hardly anyone wondered how Harpur\’s reinterpretation of the Christian story might resonate in their own lives, how they might run with his concepts. That would, I think, reflect a digital paradigm.
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These varied reactions also illustrate a weakness in Miller\’s presentation. It implies that the various paradigms are separate and distinct. In fact, I\’m sure I\’m shaped by at least two of them, maybe more. Because we don\’t move from one mode of thinking to another. Rather, we overlay a new pattern on an older one. Some people accept the new paradigm comfortably; others don\’t even recognize it.
For example – everyone has television today. That doesn\’t mean they have all moved into a broadcast mindset, any more than owning a computer presumes a digital mindset.
The same confusion plagued Elisabeth Kubler-Ross\’s Death and Dying when it first came out. People assumed that her “stages” equalled clearly defined steps. One progressed from shock to anger to bargaining to depression to acceptance. In real life, some don\’t progress at all. Others oscillate between stages, or find themselves in several stages at once.
The same, I\’m sure, applies to Miller\’s Millennium Matrix. The oral tradition still dominates the Roman Catholic Church. Conservative churches of the Reformation cling to print perceptions. Megachurches like Willow Creek exemplify the broadcast model.
I don\’t know any churches based on the digital model. But they will emerge, I\’m sure.
Whether Miller has correctly forecast the style and behaviour of organizations in a digital world, I will have to wait and see.
But in the meantime, he has given me invaluable tools for discerning social patterns and personal mindsets – and not just in churches. I now see oral hierarchies in politics, print absolutes in police forces, broadcast-style charismatic leaders in corporate boardrooms…
That\’s a lot, from one book.
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Copyright © 2002 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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