On Christmas Eve, I wrote about the temptation of forever-virtual church. Thousands of churches started streaming their services during Covid stay-at-home orders, and even though those orders are gone now, many churches are still streaming. Though streaming is useful technology, and there may be a place for it in churches post-pandemic, churches also need to consider the potential downsides.
Trevin Wax has an excellent blog post for The Gospel Coalition that’s worth reading in full called “‘Gotcha’ Sermon Clips Are Bad for the Church.” He’s referring to the online phenomenon of people sharing edited clips from sermons that portray the speaker in a negative light. Wax discusses social-media accounts that weaponize sermon clips:
Some of these [social media accounts] point the spotlight on “crazy fundamentalists” while others root out the “most woke”—in either case we’re introduced to preachers who seem determined to live up to the worst caricatures. At times, we see clips from charismatic megachurch pastors delivering inspirational drivel rather than sound biblical teaching. The intended reaction, it appears, is to name and shame the “bad preacher” and to shake one’s head in pity or disgust.
So far, these have mostly been videos of prominent pastors or Christian teachers with online ministries. But it’s worth considering that your pastor from your church could be next if you’re streaming your services for the whole world to see. Sadly, there are lots of people in this country with grievances, an Internet connection, and too much time on their hands, and they might not stop at megachurches for much longer.
“But my pastor would never say anything like those crazy people online,” you might think. Of course, but that’s not the issue. He doesn’t have to say anything crazy. He only has to say something that random people online could think is crazy if all they see is a 20-second clip with no context. By streaming every service online, your pastor is vulnerable to those kind of bad-faith attacks from a worldwide potential audience.
Not only that, pastors are human beings who make mistakes. Wax, a former missionary, writes of his own experience as a speaker:
I look back to sermons of mine from just a few years ago and find points I would make differently, analogies I’d cut, and things about the Trinity that—while not heretical—are sloppier than they should’ve been. The more I’ve grown in my skills as a preacher and thinker and theologian, the sharper (I hope) my messages have become.
Pastors have a high responsibility to teach the truth, but they also need to be able to learn and grow without having to worry about someone sharing their mistakes online. Wax writes about young pastors especially: “I shudder for the 20-something just learning to preach, knowing that any potential misstep, bad analogy, or aberrant theological point could be taken from a sermon and broadcast to thousands of people as an example of ‘what not to do.'”
I’ve heard pastors say something along these lines in their opening prayer in preparation for their sermon: “Lord, please help me to speak the truth, and may anything I say that isn’t in accordance with your Word be quickly forgotten.” They aren’t planning to say anything unbiblical, but they recognize that it could happen accidentally. That attitude demonstrates the fear and humility before God that we should want from pastors. But the Internet is forever. Nothing online can be quickly forgotten.
Every word every pastor says does not need to be preserved for posterity. There are real costs to doing so because people who know they are being recorded speak differently from people who are not being recorded. That’s not always to the benefit of honesty, either. Especially with the news out of Finland — a liberal democracy with free-speech protections — that a Christian bishop is facing criminal charges for teaching what the Bible says about sexuality, it’s not hard to imagine a pastor self-censoring because he knows his sermon will be online forever.
As I said in my piece on Christmas Eve, each church is different, and some churches will find that streaming is beneficial to their ministry. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Churches just need to be honest about the costs of streaming and the incentives it can create for congregants and pastors alike.