Innovation, Guitar Hero, and the Church
- Posted by: Todd
- Posted on: Mon, October 22, 2007
- Viewed 87
- (20) comments so far
The innovators at Guitar Hero’s parent company, Activision, understand this reality as well. That’s why they’re set to release version three of the Guitar Hero series. New songs, new skill levels, and a whole new level of play and challenge for Guitar Hero fans is just around the corner. Rather than see their product sales slide, they know they need to constantly improve the product for their customer.
Meanwhile, Activision’s rivals over at Electronic Arts are getting ready to release “Rock Band” for Playstation. Rock Band includes not only a guitar simulator, but also a drum kit and a microphone. EA has seen the success of Guitar Hero and improved (or at least expanded) on the idea. They are advertising it as a “band in a box”, and it will for sure interest a whole new set of young gamers.
What does all this have to do with the church? Well, I’m glad you asked.
Church innovators also have the job of looking at what they are currently doing and tweaking or improving it to reach a whole new audience. The true leaders and innovators in today’s church are looking for ways to do things better, to be more efficient, and to utilize their time, finances, people, and resources to best leverage their return for the Kingdom.
The true innovators find ways to do this without compromising the message of the gospel. How do we attract more people to hear the gospel? What do we need to change with our discipleship program to help people understand the gospel and grow faster? How can we make it easier (that what it is now) for people to take their next step toward Christ? What can we do better? What can we learn from other churches? What do we need to stop doing? These are all questions asked by true church innovators.
As these questions are being asked and answered, in individual churches, by individual leaders, all over the country, change is happening; and I am encouraged.
Are you an innovator? What small decision can you make in your ministry this week to leverage your resources, people, time, and money to be most effective for the Kingdom? Maybe you need to add a ‘version three’. Maybe you need to introduce the ‘drum and the microphone’.
Have fun with it this week… and give the glory to God for what he will do through your leadership!
Have a great week!
Todd
If you have a teenager (or a Playstation), then you’ve no doubt heard about ‘Guitar Hero’. Guitar Hero is a music video that uses a guitar-shaped peripheral (resembling a miniature Gibson SG) to simulate the playing of rock music. It’s all the rage. The player must play scrolling notes to complete a song. The more notes you play correctly, the harder it gets, and the higher your score. Pretty neat idea, right? I’ve played Guitar Hero, and it is a lot of fun. But according to David Riley, a video game analyst (how would you like that job?) in this month’s Fast Company magazine: “I’m tired of repeating myself.” In other words, once you’ve played Guitar Hero for 100 hours, it gets old...
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Glen on Thu, October 25, 2007
God’s Word is understandable. It is as relevant to today’s culture as it was 2000 years ago. I think that is the where you are mistaken. Somehow people today just can’t understand God’s truth if we don’t use what is deemed contemporary methods in communicating it. This mistaken idea is that somehow we need to “contextualize” the gospel. The truth of the Word….the gospel of Christ doesn’t need any contextualization persay. It doesn’t need window dressing or obfuscation of any kind. It stands alone and it is powerful without any additions from our entertainment saturated culture (Heb. 4.12)
I don’t need to put on a dog & pony show so my neighbor #1) will attend church b/c he thinks its “cool” #2) so that he will not be offended by the message…but laugh and have a good time. This is sad. Do we not believe in the power of the message and…..more importantly, in the power behind the message, or do we think that somehow it all depends on us. If we don’t take a Madison Avenue approach, nobody will be transformed by the gospel.
When we have to stoop so low as to include movie clips in our “worship” services and sermons, have we not reduced the eternal Creator-God of the universe, nothing more than a passing advertisment. Paul believed in what he termed “the foolishness of preaching.” Sounds like some of the preachers today think it is so “foolish” to just preach from the Bible…that they need to dress it up with all kinds of fads and “adaptations.”
What is often forgotten is that no medium or methodology is neutral. Someone has gone as far as to say that the medium is the message today. Thus, saying that the message is the same, but the methods have changed is really a misnomer of sorts. How we communicate the message says something about the content of the message we are delivering. That is why Paul believe in the simplicity and power in what he called “the foolishness of preaching” in I Corinthians.
I pray that God will bless your efforts for the kingdom, but I’m skeptical that true lasting fruit will emerge from “entertainment Christianity” and “spectator worship” that you seem to endorse. The big crowds that come to these kinds of churches may not be there because they are really all that interested in the content, but the delivery of the content. Thus, we produce pseudo-Christians and our churches today are sadly full of them. As Spurgeon once said, it’s easier to attract a fly with sugar rather than vinegar.
I would encourage to re-think your philosophy of ministry and ask the tough questions which you seem to easily sidestep in this exchange.
Peter Hamm on Thu, October 25, 2007
Glen,
“God’s Word is understandable”… which is why, to me, it makes as much sense in King James to some as it does to others in NLT, and the principles make just as much sense when they’re communicated in a drama or a video clip or a song or an intellectual exegetical sermon.
“It is as relevant to today’s culture as it was 2000 years ago”… which is why I struggle and work hard to communicate it to today’s culture, using the arts in a way that speaks to people today, not to change the message, which never changes, but to adapt it to the medium, which EVERY church does, whether they sing the great old hymns of faith that didn’t exist 2000 years ago or the great new songs of faith that didn’t exist 2000 years ago. Also much like translating it into a new language.
[I’m skeptical that true lasting fruit will emerge from “entertainment Christianity” and “spectator worship” that you seem to endorse.] We see lives changed all the time, and we see people who follow God doing it better all the time.
For example, last weekend we cancelled church. That’s right, all three services… cancelled. We spent MONTHS before this event preparing an event called “Church without Walls.” A large dedicated group of our “lay leaders” arranged and created serving opportunities throughout our community for our congregation to spend the time (and more) they normally spend attending our service in an ACT of service to the community. Painting porches and windows for people who can’t do it themselves, cleaning up and painting a local coffeehouse that is a ministry to youth at risk, cleaning up an unsightly embankment for the city that they can’t get anybody to clean up, cleaning and restoring an old graveyard that doesn’t get the care it deserves, and doing a whole BUNCH of personal service projects for people in the community who just needed some help at home that they couldn’t get.
It was a HUGE success. Our people signed up in droves and we went beyond our already ambitious goal of most of our people serving. They had a great time (nothing wrong with that) but as I went around documenting the event for a video, we learned that they REALLY got why we were doing this. And the people they served did, too.
THAT is the mark of true spiritual maturity. Serving and loving your neighbor with the love of Christ… and our people do it all the time, we just did it all together for one day as an act of “church service”, not going to church… but being the church… despite the fact that our services are seen by many as lame seeker-sensitive drivel. (humor intended!)
Following Jesus… it looks a lot like loving your neighbor… And that, I think, is the best sign of spiritual maturity there is.
I would encourage you also, Glen, to reconsider your apparent hostility to the way I and others do ministry. Perhaps you’ve seen modern contemporary relevant ministry done badly and sloppily… That’s not, I assure you, always the case.
Glen on Thu, October 25, 2007
Peter,
I’ll let a couple of respected guys who can say it far better than I can, respond:
http://www.crosswalk.com/1354535/
http://www.crosswalk.com/1377799/
http://www.crosswalk.com/11552060/
I think service to the community is great. I think abandoning the corporate gathered worship of God on the Lord’s Day for this purpose shows the shallowness of your ecclesiology.
I’ll make this my final comment on this thread.
In grace & truth,
Glen
Peter Hamm on Thu, October 25, 2007
Why am I not surprised that you pointed me to a MacArthur article. I guess I could respond by criticizing the apparent “shallowness of your missiology”, too… I will try and refrain, as I would bet you have a pretty deep and vibrant idea of mission in today’s world, and I think that’s what drives your thinking even on this issue… so I applaud that.
However, I don’t think you know really much of anything about the depth or non-depth of my ecclesiology. We made a HUGE point, to our people and the community, about how we are the church everywhere we go. It was VERY deep ecclesiology, imho, and it made a deep, and time will tell but I suspect lasting, impact.
...and we aren’t the first to be criticized for working when we should be worshipping and resting… So, I’m in good company.
http://www.mondaymorninginsight.com/images/smileys/wink.gif
John on Sun, December 30, 2007
Guitar Hero is filled with sexual lyrics, pentagrams, smoking, scantilly clad girls, and the defiant, rock and roll “I’ll do whatever the hell I want.” attitude.
WWJD? Would he approve of Guitar Hero?
Funny. I had the word “p i s s” in my original e-mail address. Your site blocks this word? Yet it seems to approve of Guitar Hero? I don’t get the logic.
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