Jeffrey T. Howard
Since reading this book I have been reflecting on the different media through which the gospel has been communication and the effect that the medium has on the gospel message. As a seminarian I have been trained in the biblical languages. Hebrew and Greek were the first media though which the gospel was transmitted. For the gospel to be understood to people today it has to first be translated into modern languages. This translation process is imperfect. As we have learned there is not always a simple one to one correspondence between a Hebrew or Greek word and an English one. One example of this is the plural form of the pronoun "you". The biblical languages can express either a singular or plural "you". But in English the same word is used for both. (An exception to this is the southern folk expression "y'all".) The reason MDIV student must learn to understand biblical languages is so that this sort of issue is clearly understood and communicated through a sermon. So the meaning of the gospel changes from language to language. This necessitates the training of clergy in Greek and Hebrew to preserve the original meanings.
The gospel is not only communicated through language but also through culturally sensitive stories. These stories may not be understandable to people from other cultures. For example, what would "a camel pass through the eye of a needle" mean to a middleclass person in Ohio or to an international student living in California? Culturally sensitive stories have to first be understood in their original historical context. Only then can the story be explained to people in a different historical context. The medium of story telling is a very effective way of communicating ideas to an audience is a particular context but would have to be changed to communicate the ideas to audiences in a different context.
Besides language and culturally specific stories I have also been reflecting on setting as a medium through with the gospel is communicated. A person will listen differently in different settings. And thus the communication of the gospel will be different in different settings. For example in class the TA gave an example of an agnostic friend who had always rejected the gospel. But when the gospel was heard in the setting of a wedding it was well received. What changed? For one thing the gospel we proclaim is complex. It takes the entire Bible and more to hold it. So it could be that this person heard a portion of the gospel that was more palatable at the wedding than the portions he had heard before. Another possibility is that while at the wedding his listening was more receptive than when he heard Christians in other settings. As Christian leaders we should understand that there are many settings where the gospel can be communicated. Other settings may be more effective in communicating the gospel to specific groups than Sunday morning worship.
What Hipps has done in his book is warn us that the gospel we are proclaiming can change as we use different media. We do not want the gospel message to change. We want to preserve it and pass it on in a perfect form. Traditions have sought to preserve the gospel message through the use of confessional statement or by a group of scholars who ensure that meaning remains the same. Today many Christians reject the need for confessions or a magisterium and assume that the gospel message will be correctly communicated regardless of the medium used. But since the media selected for the communication of the gospel can affect the meaning being communicated we must be very careful to preserve the true meaning.
[1] Shane Hipps, The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture (Grand Rapids: Zondervan 2005)
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