Here’s a great post with lots of good questions asked and comments made.  This one is one of surprisingly very few I’ve found on this subject.  I own a book by the author of this post, David Fitch,  which is The Great Giveaway: Reclaiming the Mission of the Church from Big Business, Parachurch Organizations, Psychotherapy, Consumer Capitalism, and Other Modern Maladies. 

This issue here,  the question of “Video Venues”  for “Church” campuses,  fits into this question from the book about what we have allowed the church to “farm out”;  in this case,  it’s the “accommodation” of adopting technological “solutions” without asking what might seem an obvious theological/ecclesiological question:  is this allowing us to function as the church,  or is it seeing “success” in more worldly terms:  size, production, entertainment,  textualization of the “message”.  And does merely transmitting the more apparent visual and audio elements of “worship” over a new medium keep the “wholistic worship” together,  or where does it lose some of its spiritual/embodied “ambiance”? 

Where this post and many of the comments come down on the warning side of this issue,  I’d like to see some exploration of where video (particularly the “conversation format” such as that enabled by Skype and made popular by Leo Laporte’s TWIT network and The Gillmor Gang) could fulfill/enhance some communicative roles of a church.

Reclaiming the Mission » The Video Venue Farce: Why Video Venue is the Antithesis of Missional