Bad video teaching doesn’t work anywhere.
You can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on equipment, have a “better than live” experience, but if the preacher isn’t good on video people aren’t going to watch.
As video teaching has gone from fringe to mainstream, more and more preachers will discover they are not wired up to preach on video. Even Paul said he was a lot better on paper than on stage.
As more preachers decide “video doesn’t work,” whatever the reason, fewer will take the plunge.
Young leaders want to preach.
I am encountering more and more incredible young leaders who are leaving great churches because they have no opportunity to speak.
For some leaders, they don’t speak because they don’t have the gift; but others are gifted communicators, but there is no place to use that gift.
It will be increasingly difficult to find gifted leaders to be campus pastors in all video environments.
A new generation will be very resistant to video teaching.
You can put what I know about Millennials in a thimble and still have room for your thumb, but I think they will be drawn more and more to personal contact, caring less than prior generations about excellence and more about transparency.
Raw and real vs. packaged and slick.
Is it time to sell your video camera and projectors? Absolutely not.
Video teaching may have a long shelf life ahead. Sunday school lasted a generation, and church buses ran for a couple of decades.
The bottom line for me, however, is to not get too worked up over a specific tool that God chooses to use for a time to grow His church. Video teaching is neither evil nor holy, it’s just a vehicle.
If video teaching works to spread the Gospel for a while, then use it. Once you’ve determined that it is ineffective in your context, then abandon the camera and focus on what God seems to be blessing.
At one point God used a donkey to preach, wouldn’t that be fun if that’s what’s next?
