Multimedia’s Silent Partner by Lou Douros

It’s during quiet moments that noise is obvious. It’s the otherness of quiet that does it. The lector in the Anglican church I visited in Cambridge said it in a way I’ll not soon forget. “Let us quieten our hearts as we come before our God.” It was what he said just prior to the prayers of the people.

To quieten. It’s when “silence” becomes a verb. When we accept the task to lead worship, we often overlook this one as a worship element. Our world is noisy. If we’re not careful, we can fall into the snare of irrigating our congregations with distraction. Is it because we think we must be relevant? Silence is dangerous. It’s where we confront the truth about ourselves.

Multimedia is what I do. My role as interaction designer is to represent both technology and humans. I am a proponent of an electronic environment that serves as a gateway to higher truth. Worship software. Dual screen, point and click, drag and drop, lick-able virtual buttons that drive visual and audible media through a computer card and onto a glowing screen.

Sometimes it’s necessary. And that’s when it should be used. But there are times we go into multimedia binges. Sermon points fly onto the screen like so many Rockettes making their choreographed entrances. A trailer from The Matrix hollers and belches it’s semi-gospel incantations. We cheer and clap, singing celebratory songs. “Happy Church”, a friend calls it.

Sometimes the sizzle isn’t necessary. Sometimes it should be laid to rest; black the projectors and dim the lights, fade the music, hush the crowd… That’s when the otherness of the quiet becomes a spectacular multimedia event. Replace the foot-candles of theater lighting with wax and wicks and fire. There is a time for both celebration and contemplation. And both practiced corporately are powerful.

Stillness makes me listen. At first it’s a small whistling sound my nostrils make as I breathe. Then I can hear the man behind me wheezing, and the cough from across the aisle. And the hum of the air-conditioner and the jay outside the stained glass. And finally, if the worship leader will just keep his mouth shut, I’ll begin to hear what I came here for. The Small voice.

I hear those around me working out their own grace. Just as corporate celebration, cheering for the home team in the stands, is more powerful than the isolation of sitting in the living room with a canned drink and a bag of Cheetos. The body of Christ, sitting joined by the common marrow of our sin and depravity.

Don’t forget that our imaginations and our memories are as brilliantly produced as any Industrial Light & Magic effect. If we can get our pew-mates to recall their need for God, we’ve done our part. Too often we push and prod through clever dramas and sincere solos, then send them home whistling. We never let them consider the plurality of our condition.

That’s what multimedia is supposed to do. It’s meant to take the viewer somewhere. They ride the wave of their own imagination, then suddenly sit, bolt upright, realizing that it’s them up there on the screen. That picture of the bloated child is my child. That scene from Les Miserables, that’s me Valjon has come to save. King Lear and I are one in the same as we rant in the wilderness, tormented by our need for love.

And that’s where we worship leaders cave in. The moment we see them sit bolt upright, we must be brave enough to stop everything and let them have quiet. It’s whistling nostrils all around at first, but then, at last we begin to pray for the hungry. We know the picture of a God who has pursued us and saved us as Jon Valjon returns grace for grace. It’s the quiet that calls Lear’s rant to our recollecting minds. Let them quieten their hearts.

This other side of multimedia, it is the silent partner. The removal of the sensory to let our tactile imagination do its duty. Let them have the silence that must follow Lieutenant Dan’s redemption found through his friend Forrest Gump aboard the shrimp trawler. Rent a movie sometime and watch without the sound turned up. (I do this on airplanes, I’m too cheap to rent headphones.) You’ll see what your congregation misses when they are pushed headlong from the slide show into the sermon.

The arts were made for suffering. Sometimes it’s the artist, sometimes the patron, who suffers. Sometimes both. As we grow into this brave new world of multimedia, may we be bold enough to tread softly, and after the nose whistles and wheezing fades, may we find Christ in the remembrance of all we have seen and touched and tasted only moments before.

Lou Douros is the Interaction Designer for Grass Roots Software and Producer/Director for Fresh Air Media in Auburn, CA. Lou’s primary focus is development of Prologue SundayPlus, the presentation software of choice for churches worldwide. www.sundayplus.com

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