On Form and Content: Ecclesiology and The Writers' Strike

Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash

Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan was famous for observing, "The medium is the message." In other words, the way in which we share information or consume entertainment is not neutral. Many folks who have been around the digital world for any length of time know this, if only instinctually. A popular meme, for instance, connects the Seven Deadly Sins to different social media platforms. Facebook is envy, Yelp is gluttony, LinkedIn is greed, and (of course) Twitter is wrath. The meme is funny because, when you spend enough time around them, most users come to see that something about each of these platforms lends itself to particular habits of thought, speech, and behavior.

But what may seem like common wisdom often goes ignored in church life. I speak here out of my primary experience in the mainline UMC world and, in a former life, the SBC evangelical world. Protestants in general struggle with ecclesiology–with a robust articulation of what it means to be the church. Oftentimes here politics fills the intellectual void, with ideology replacing theology, and churches become either the Republicans or Democrats at prayer rather than something recognizable as the church.

The Ontological Void

But the lack of ecclesiology does not leave only a theological void. It also leaves an ontological void. Put differently, if Christians do not have a sense of what the church is (ontology deals with being) then the church can be quite literally anything. I have long been drawn to the classic Reformation vision of the church preserved in the (Methodist) 13th Article of Religion. Here the church is defined as a community “in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments duly administered according to Christ's ordinance." (I once got into trouble with a Quaker friend of mine when I described the church in this manner!)

Of course, it is easy to critique any definition. Postmodern suspicion habituates us to ask, "Who defines what the pure Word of God is?" and "What constitutes a sacrament?" Deconstruct to the heart’s content, but if “church” can mean anything, it means nothing. We who follow Jesus would do well to consider the ways in which form shapes content.

Streaming and Striking

That brings us to the ongoing (as of this writing) strike by the Writers Guild of America (WGA). The WGA represents the vast majority of television and film writers in the US. Your favorite show? That movie you just saw? It was written by WGA writers. I had heard that many of the issues that led to this current strike were related to streaming, but this video essay by Vox, titled, "How streaming caused the TV writers strike," brought home to me how different the world of streaming is from the older model in which there were only a few large outlets, and, with cable, perhaps a couple of dozen other options. Now, with the streaming wars, there are literally hundreds of shows written per year. But the new medium has shaped the content in ways that make life more difficult for WGA guild members.

For instance, when one's main writing contracts were for a twenty-episode or more season like on Law & Order or Lost, a writer had a stable income for a considerable amount of time. Now, as streamers constantly churn out content, even major platforms like Disney+ are routinely putting out six or eight episode seasons. This makes for much less job security. 

Also changed is the question of residuals, the share of fees that writers (and others) receive when a show is re-aired or syndicated on TV. But when that content moves to streaming, that pay structure changes and writers no longer receive a check each time that episode or movie is aired. For many of the middle-class writers and others in the entertainment industry, residuals were what gave them financial stability in between seasons and projects. But the format has drastically changed the financial structure of the industry. It may look the same to us–we click the TV on and zone out for an hour, as always–but it has been a sea change for those who create the content and rely on it for their livelihood. 

Content, Medium, and Worship

There are many ways in which this may apply to the life of the church. We, too, are still grasping how to bridge the emerging, constantly evolving digital world and the ancient Christian community. Responses are predictable, ranging from a Luddite rejection in some places to an unreflective, syncretistic adoption. I have written previously on the question of online communion, which is but one symptom of this larger issue. As much as people love to talk about rejecting "extremes," we have little thoughtful guidance on how to discern when technology is a useful tool, and when it has become a tyrant. 

One attempt at such guidance came from Professor Casey Sigmon, a Disciples of Christ scholar teaching at the United Methodist St. Paul School of Theology. In a recent essay, Sigmon argues for online communion by making a case that refusing virtual celebration renders the church guilty of both ableism (by assuming a degree of physical, mental, and emotional health among those who do not worship in person) and elitism (by assuming a qualitative distinction between virtual and physical presence). She tries to build a positive case for moving beyond the binary of virtual/embodied, but unfortunately does so in part by relying on a tired binary between Eastern and Western Christianity. 

Moreover, the ableism and elitism she decries in her opponents can be just as easily applied to her own position. For instance, she calls for synchronous over asynchronous online gatherings, asserting rather than arguing that these are qualitatively better (elitism?) and neglecting the fact that not all people can attend a synchronous gathering (ableism?). Moreover, she neglects the harm that new media has done to younger generations, as argued by psychologists like Jon Haidt and explored in documentaries like The Social Dilemma. More recently, psychology professor Jean Twenge has shared statistics that evidence an alarming increase in depressive symptoms in 8th-12th graders, with nearly half of all these students self-reporting that they agree with statements such as, "I do not enjoy life." (See her book Generations for more.) To underwrite a full-bore digitizing of the Christian community at a time when the most digitally saturated people are increasingly unwell risks throwing water on people who are drowning.

Pre-Modern Faith in the Post-Pandemic World

In the Vox piece linked above, one of the writers interviewed noted that the legacy television model, driven by advertising rather than subscription dollars, meant that writers had to (often) break up their narratives to account for a minute or more of ads between segments. Here again we see that no form is neutral. It is true in our entertainment, our news, and our education. For too long, followers of Jesus have neglected to ask how medium shapes message. We long for people to come to church, or return to church, without ever doing the hard work of asking, "What is the church? What is the church for?"

I remain committed, as I think the Bible demands, to an ontology of the church that is deeply connected to flesh and blood. In particular, to Jesus' flesh and blood, broken and poured out for us who gather in his name to give hugs, share food, lay hands in prayer, shout for joy, weep in lament, and build wheelchair ramps. We should be cautious in evaluating models of church that reduce human beings to avatars, worship to content, and church to an app. Church is not a building, as is often tritely (but rightly) said, but it is also not simply a collection of pixels. As Neil Postman warned in his classic Amusing Ourselves to Death, "to maintain that technology is neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at this late hour, stupidity plain and simple" (157).

Likewise, we need some understanding of what the church does. As some missiologists have argued, the church can be understood as mission; the church is what the church does. Again, I think the definition from the Articles of Religion is helpful: we gather first to worship God by Word and Sacrament, and from these flow our fellowship, study, ministry, and mission. In other words, the church is a theocentric organization, and our mission is our being. As C.S. Lewis put it in Mere Christianity, the purpose of the church is to make “little Christs,” to make people holy (a definition any brand of Wesleyan should be able to endorse). But popular models of church tend to begin with us, with our identity or interests. And so “types” of church multiply like tribbles: patriotic church, family-centered church, yoga church, social justice church, beer church, nerd church. In all of these, we seek to attract others to Jesus by gathering around or for something other than Jesus first.

To be sure, the intention in all of these is positive. United Methodists and other Wesleyans in these debates will (in my experience, ad nauseam) cite Wesley's desire to become “more vile” in his field preaching, never acknowledging that their ecclesiology has shifted from a theocentric to an anthropocentric model. If “church” can mean anything, it means nothing. And if it is first about me and not about God, we are on the road to creating just one more social club, non-profit, or affinity group. 

Worth noting is that none of this is an all-or-nothing proposition. One can be creative in ministry without tacking “church” on after any random group activity. You can go out and eat nachos with your friends without having to call it “nacho church.” It is just nachos. Similarly, it is possible to find a golden mean with the digital world. There is a wide field available between “the church should no longer stream worship” and “everything the church does can be replicated fully online.” In my own context, we do a podcast, I love zoom meetings, and my church offers a livestream each Sunday in which folks joining online are welcomed and valued. But some meetings require an in-person presence, and some things in worship, like sharing the common cup and loaf, require us to be together in more than a spiritual sense.

Conclusion: Betting on the Wrong Experience

If the church is reduced to a digital platform or shrunken to fit a hobby or affinity, we have built on shifting sand, rather than the solid foundation of the “great cloud of witnesses” who have gone before us (Hebrews 12:1). Without a functional ecclesiology, various Christian groups, and certainly those of us in the way of the Wesleys, will flounder in our efforts to live the Great Commandment and pursue the Great Commission. A church reduced to a YouTube channel or a pastime will miss the fullness of the missio Dei, the mission of God.

To cite one more entertainment industry controversy, I close with an observation from the late film critic Roger Ebert. He once argued that the movie industry always turns to technological gimmicks when it senses financial danger. The occasional surge in popularity of 3D is the most obvious example of this. He argued, though, that technological gimmicks were a poor substitute for engaging, unique stories. The industry, he said, was "betting on the wrong experience." 

With virtual-church and the ever-expanding variety of Christian communities gathered around affinities and hobbies, I worry we may be betting on the wrong experience. All of this is well intended, it is worth reiterating. But, as Mickey Efird was fond of saying, sincerity is no guarantee that one is right. Constantly reinventing the church to appease what the market is telling us will work this week neglects the good inheritance given to us by the Spirit through generations of faithful women and men. 

Let us not think we can constantly shift the form of church while keeping the content the same. Instead, perhaps we might consider how to balance a creative openness to the future with the ballast of established wisdom, hard won by martyrs, monks, and saints. The message is always impacted by the medium. If you don’t believe me, just ask the WGA.

Drew McIntyre is an Elder in the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church and the pastor of Grace United Methodist Church in Greensboro, NC.