Collide Magazine recently posted something about “Video Standards” that zoomed into my GooReader and intrigued me enough to read a little further.
Scott’s words were choice.
Gary Molander from Flood Gate Productions? Perhaps not so much.
Gary proceeds to outline why church’s and ministries need a video “standard” from a theological perspective, suggesting that we need to be discerning when we pick and choose the videos that we use and make sure they are theologically correct.
I’m down with that, period. Even though I apparently differ a lot about his use of scripture, I won’t nitpick… except with this:
Content is not king. Beauty is. Content never changed anyone’s life. Beauty, however, changes our lives every day. If given a video option that nails the topic, but is poorly done, I implore pastors and church leaders to not use that video.
Seriously? “Content never changed anyone’s life?”
Aren’t the words that we read in the bible considered “content?” Last time I checked, people we’re being saved because of the content of the scriptures that they read, not because the beauty of the prose and form of the psalms and gospels were anything pretty to look at (although some would say they are… and I think they are…!).
Words change lives. Nothing says “Jesus saves” like… well… the words “Jesus saves”.
But I do agree, again, that discernment is necessary and that a ministry shouldn’t buy just anything without doing some good old fashioned thinking.
I’d also submit that Gary is talking about video inside the local church worship experience. He knows far more about that than I do. And it’s a good conversation to have.
For those that are in the “online” space, we should also have the same question: Should there be a “standard” for video on the web? Gary may speak of subjective angles of beauty, but let’s talk some cold, hard objective numbers like bitrates, files sizes, streaming requirements, encoding, delay, platform technology, embedding practices, etc…
I’ll hold my comments since I’ve already given a lot here… What say you?
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