The One-Eyed Preacher

Is there any hope for Christian TV?

"This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire, but it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box."

A chain-smoking TV journalist named Edward R. Murrow leveled these words against the medium that made him the most trusted news anchor of the 20th century. For Murrow, television was a neutral medium--holding the potential of both grandeur and debasement. Several decades later, Neil Postman went a step further in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, arguing that television is a trivializing medium--one that does not merely deceive us, but inoculates us to the truth.

If so, we must ask whether television is a worthwhile medium for disseminating the gospel in 21st-century America. For many, the jury’s still out. Christian TV producer Phil Cooke generated an interesting response when he recently asked the question on his blog, “What will it take to fix Christian television?”

Though many criticize it for the scandalous fund-raising techniques it takes to keep some programs on the air, this was not the main complaint against Christian TV voiced in the informal poll and accompanying comments. The No. 1 problem was a perceived “lack of creativity.” Blog commenters cited the fact that most Christian programming is a monologue (preaching and teaching), in stark contrast to the interactive entertainment that is increasingly popular on mainstream TV.

Add to this the declining appetite for TV news (which shares Christian TV’s “monologic” qualities)—particularly among younger viewers. As a 2004 study from The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press points out, only “a third of the public (34 percent) regularly watches one of the nightly network news broadcasts on CBS, ABC or NBC. The total audience for these broadcasts shrunk by about half between 1993 and 2000.”

But I don't think a lack of creativity or growing competition from secular channels are Christian TV's biggest problem. The biggest problem is a general decline in trust that people have for mainstream media outlets—particularly TV. Speaking from my own experience, I'm actually less likely to believe something once I've seen it on TV. Like many, I prefer to pick and choose from a combination of media sources—online, radio and TV—and then make my own judgments.

So, if TV in general has lost its “cultural capital”, what does that mean for Christian TV? How do you communicate a transcendent message through a medium that everyone associates with triviality, consumerism and even deception. As Marshall McLuhan said, "The medium is the message." If no one takes the medium seriously anymore, what does that say about the message?

For me, it emphasizes the importance of the local church and personal evangelism. The "one-eyed preacher" in our living rooms will never replace the flesh-and-blood pastors who invest their lives in their congregations on a daily basis. Anyone who would subcontract his spiritual health--or the fate of the lost--to the same machine that brought ALF into our homes should probably have his head examined.

by Matt Green
from The Ministry Report
September 28, 2006