In the spring of last year, Highway Video had 300 clients. Currently that list is closing in on 4,000, most of them evangelical churches, including all Christian denominations. Who else is using video and other multimedia? A 2001 study of 14,000 American houses of worship -- from Judeo-Christian to Buddhist -- by the Hartford Institute for Religious Research, determined that 40 percent use visual projection equipment, and 16 percent say this equipment is "always" in use. Two-thirds use electric instruments or recorded music during services; one-third use these resources "often." But Scott Thumma from the Hartford Institute says it's mostly Christian houses of worship -- especially evangelical -- that are getting into religious showbiz.
"For a lot of other groups," says Thumma, "it just doesn't resonate with their culture. Their way of worshipping rules out the possibility." Non-Western cultures are not (yet) as media-obsessed, he says. Plus, evangelicals have a history of investing in new inventions -- a pipe organ, a slot on local cable -- that will attract followers. Their focus has long been on presentation, on watching the pastor perform and even creating a cult of personality around him. It's something they share with Baptist churches, which also have adopted new media with gusto.
But it isn't just historical precedent behind the churches' faith in multimedia. And it isn't just evangelical churches that are ready to take the leap. The problem that Sweet calls "the mass exodus from traditional religion in Western culture," is a huge motivation. To illustrate the seriousness of the phenomenon, Sweet points out that on Sundays in London, more people are visiting the local IKEA than all of the churches combined. Attendance patterns aren't much better in the United States.
Kimon Sargeant, a Ph.D. in the sociology of religion, explains the trend this way: With the movement in Western society toward a culture of choice and individuality, churches are no longer guaranteed the next generation's attendance. Something had to change -- church had to become as attractive as secular forms of entertainment, as gripping as the Super Bowl, MTV or "The X-Files," or perish.
Which is where Michael Slaughter comes in. "When's the last time you wanted to spend all day at church?" he asks. It is a rhetorical invitation to appreciate his approach: There is no room in the variety show at Ginghamsburg Church for the audience to become bored.
Renaissance, a 2-year-old nondenominational church in Millburn, N.J., is a brand-new media church. Founders spent the bulk of their start-up money on audio-visual equipment, even before they had a permanent home. Every Sunday, their "setup team" hauls equipment in two trailers to the local high school, where they rent the auditorium and several classrooms for the children's ministry. It takes about four hours for tech setup.
Renaissance creative director Steve Young has grand plans for media programming. He wants to create a kind of video wallpaper that will run during the entire service. There'll be montages and constant surges of images -- a concept similar to Highway Video's "vibe videos," which show images of sunsets, mountains, the ocean and the sky, sped up like those science-class videos of a flower morphing from bud to bloom, only the church ones are branded with phrases like "Don't be afraid," or "There's nothing to fear," or "Be patient."
Young describes with palpable excitement the lines he's seen outside one church in Texas that presents Christian rock concerts as part of their Generation X ministry on Saturday nights. "They start lining up hours before the doors open," he says. "It's like a U2 concert."
For now, though, Renaissance is decidedly less high-tech than Ginghamsburg, and the church's 40 members are not knocking down any doors. Their service begins with David Cobia, Renaissance's pastor, and Young, both dressed casually in cords and jeans, playing some Christian rock songs -- Cobia's on lead guitar and Young is on the keyboard. The lyrics are projected onto the home-movie-size screen on the stage behind them. There's a PowerPoint presentation of graphics that illustrate the Scriptures, then the words themselves, and for one interactive segment, Rorschach ink blots. Later in the service, a clip from "Four Weddings and a Funeral" is shown. It's the scene where the bumbling minister botches a wedding ceremony, illustrating how tongue-tied you can get when you're trying to explain your faith.
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