A bridge between the media
and the Christian community
Towards 2012
An address to the Churches' Media Conference 2007
Andrew Graystone
At the Churches' Media Conference we had a series of glimpses into the future of the media. Some messages came through loud and clear. The future is digital; the future is interactive; the future is portable; the future is multi-platform; the future is commercial; the future is scary.
We are entering an era of digital saturation, where our shopping, banking, education, leisure, entertainment, communication - and for some of us even our worship - are done online. And we people of faith have to decide what we are going to do about it. We are in a very similar place to the pioneer Christians who first dipped their toes in the media water 40 and more years ago. We have to work out – almost from scratch - how people of faith engage with the radically new media landscape. Of course, one option is not to engage at all. We could stand like King Canute on the digital beach and pray that the tide will turn. But it won't. Or we can do nothing and simply watch as the culture is transformed around us. But people of faith have no mandate to stand still.
As you know, over the next 5 years the analogue TV signals that we've been using to watch TV over the last 60 years will be switched off. The government's schedule for “digital switch-off” presents the Churches Media Council with a challenge. We have three critical tasks to fulfil.
The first task relates to the Christian community. If the nation is going to go digital by 2012 (at least as far as it's TV viewing goes), can the Christian community match this timetable? Can we equip ourselves with the technology and the know-how to take advantage of the opportunities in front of us? Can we in the Christian community change our thinking to accommodate the new digital environment? It's not just a matter of buying a video projector for the church or sending the weekly notice-sheet round by email. The digital revolution asks us to change our thinking too. It asks profound theological and pastoral questions, as well as questions about communications, technology and creativity.
Over the next few months the Churches Media Council will start to publish a bulletin called Need to Know. Its aim is to keep the leaders of the faith community up to speed with developments in digital environment, and their pastoral and missional implications. But if you ask me honestly I would say that the future of the Christian message in the digital environment can't be left in the hands of church leaders.
If we want to engage in the new digital environment we will need to take a lead from the young people in our churches. It is people in their teens and 20s who are most comfortable in this Brave New World. But they need those of us who are older to understand and engage with them both technologically and pastorally. They need sustained help to work out what it means to live Christian-ly in a digital world. Who will help my son – and me for that matter - to work out what it means to live as a Christian in a virtual environment?
So the Churches Media Council exists to help and equip the Christian community to engage with the digital future, as producers, as consumers and as priests.
The second task of the Churches' Media Council relates to the industry – and in that I include radio and TV, online, gaming and many other platforms that haven't yet been invented. I meet every day with programme-makers and industry executives. And most of them are as scared and uncertain about the future as anyone else. They need to hear clear prophetic voices from people of faith, people who understand the digital environment, who can help to draw straight lines and can remind them of the sacred humanity of the audience, and that there is more to communication than commerce. We need to speak about values and spirituality – and not from a distance in green ink, but out of real and close relationships… the sort of relationships many of us engage in from day to day. We have a prophetic role in the industry – and I believe the industry is inviting us to play that role.
To play that role a couple of things need to happen. First, those of us who work in the media and care about Christian faith need to work together, talk together, do some serious theology together. Too often we have created false barriers amongst ourselves – between radio and TV, between the commercial sector and the funded sector, between the Christian independent sector and the secular mainstream, between the BBC and… well, everyone else. Frankly, Christian people cannot afford to hold each other at arms' length. We need to learn from each other, share skills and ideas.
Second - we need to let go some of the old battles we have fought over policy and privilege, for instance over scheduling and religious broadcasting. We need to build bridges, not barriers. The Christian community has become famous in the media for being critical, ignorant, anti-intellectual and self-righteous. We need to become famous for being constructive, appreciative, co-operative and ready to serve.
The third task of the Churches' Media Council is what it has always been - to support and encourage talented people in the industry. The Association of Christians in Media has done a great job over the years. But the organisation needs to be renewed and refreshed. We are missing great tranches of Christians working in the media. The membership ought to be much larger and much younger than it is. And we need to reach out into sectors where we are currently weak – including online, commercial radio, independent production and network TV.
We're launching a new organisation – a successor to the ACM. It will be called theMediaNet. We're aiming to develop a widespread and robust chaplaincy service, easy ways of accessing support and friendship, resources dealing with issues facing Christians in the media, and crucially, a web-based community of support, information and friendship.
Helping the Christian community to engage with the media; serving the media community as friends and prophets; supporting and networking young Christians through theMediaNet. Three huge tasks for the Churches' Media Council.
Come 2012 your old analogue TV set will stop working. If you want, you can still keep it, sitting in the corner of the living room. If you like, you can sit and watch it every night. But it will no longer receive TV programmes. It will be a museum-piece, a useless anachronism. We have until 2012 to make the switch. Don't let's be as useless as an analogue TV in a digital age.
