Ed Stetzer: Video Venues are a Barrier to Most of the People We Want to Reach

New LifeWay Research reveals new information on church video venues.

I've been a pretty vocal critic of video venues through the years. It's not that I don't think that God can and even often does bless preaching that comes off a screen, it's more that I am concerned for the formation of communities who choose this route and the people within them. That is, I'm concerned with how technology shapes us, and what trade-offs are made when we choose to beam the sermons of one person to ever-increasing numbers of people in ever-increasingly distant locales rather than raise up, train and send communicators who can apply the Word of God in local contexts to people they actually know and regularly relate to.

Now, a new survey from LifeWay Research shows that this approach may even be turning off the very people we'd like to reach with the Gospel.

In a telephone poll conducted during September of 2013, in which 1,001 adults were asked "If you were considering visiting a church, would it matter if the sermon was preached on a video screen or in-person," 35% replied they would only visit a church in which the sermon would be preached in person. A further 30% said they would prefer to visit a church where there was a live preacher. 30% said it wouldn't matter to them and exactly 0% replied that they would prefer or would only visit a church with video sermons. Keep reading

Also see
Ed Stetzer: Of Course People Prefer Live Preaching, But Video Venues Work When You Work Them