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The Spectacle of Worship in a Wired World: Electronic Culture and the Gathered People of God

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This is an important book, not only because the author has such a firm grip on his subject, but also because of the timely need. The church today must retool its communication systems if it is to have an audience in the under 40 crowd. Dr. Sample makes the case that if an older generation of church goers is so comfortable with the status quo, especially in worship, and sees no need to change, its children and grandchildren will soon be strangers to the church.

The author says that those born after 1960 are simply wired differently than their seniors, and require another approach to communicating through worship. Sight and sound, lively music, multi-image video, drama, dance must replace reliance on a twenty minute sermon as the chief means of telling the story of faith. The electronic culture that has swamped our globe must not be ignored by the church. This revolution is as significant as that of the print revolution in the middle ages. And just as Martin Luther used that new medium to proclaim the faith, so church leaders today must claim the new media as the means of conveying the story.

Dr. Sample explores the meanings of this new way of looking at life and reality and then applies it to the church, especially at worship.

I not only highly recommend the book; I think its message is crucial for the church's ability to reach this electronic generation.

Tex Sample, in his book "The Spectacle of Worship in a Wired World," addresses the cultural divisions between the postmodern generation and the moderns (those born before 1945), and how that division plays out in the worship of the church. The basic elements of the electronic culture (postmodern) are images, sound as beat, and visualization. Sample blends scholasticism and humorous anecdotes to demonstrate how much of the postmodern cultural elements (images, sound as beat, and visualization) are already present in worship. Rather than fight against these elements, Sample argues for their understanding and intentional use in worship.

Sample continues to argue against the use of the word "relevant," but chooses the word "Incarnational." When churches are "out of touch with the people who live around them, the problem is not that they are irrelevant, but that they (are) not Incarnational" (1998:105). The book concludes with an illustrated worship service designed with the electronic culture in mind (a worship service using images, sound as beat, and visualization).

The Spectacle of Worship in A Wired World is highly useful for those who are attempting to comprehend the worship wars that are taking place across the church. Sample, a scholar and keen observer of culture, particularly of entertainment spectacles, explores the worship ramifications of the cultural gap that separates those born before 1945 and those born after. Developing a historically grounded argument that is both scholarly and anecdotal, Sample focuses upon the effects of electronic media upon the manner in which younger people experience and know their world. He persuasively demonstrates that electronic culture is profoundly shaping the worship needs and expectations of these younger believers. Postmodern persons increasingly comprehend the world through images, sound as beat and visualization. Moderns perceive meaning in words, utilizing rational and analytical discourse whereas postmodern persons perceive meaning more subjectively, emotively, and experientially. These differences have extraordinary ramifications for creating worship services. Postmodern persons are sometimes accused of being intellectually bankrupt but Sample demonstrates how powerfully electronic media can critique culture. Sample closes his helpful book with an illustrative worship service utilizing electronic media and designed to impact electronic culture.

The Spectacle of Worship in a Wired World challenges the church to stop being "a downbeat institution in an upbeat world." In this book, Tex Sample invites those of us who call ourselves "the church" to share the good news in the ways electronic generations "think, feel, approach life, form relationships, make commitments, bond, and deal with issues of central importance." Don't read this newest Sample book if you think incarnational theology is irrelevant! The Rev. Marta Poling-Goldene, Director of Witness Ministries, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Tex Sample in The Spectacle of Worship in a Wired World, wanted to provoke the Church to "get with it" by pitching its tent where masses of unbelievers are congregating. Sample deliberately engaged the electronic culture to demonstrate that it was not to be discounted or feared, but could be utilized, embraced and directed for God's purpose. Music, movies, and dance can provide major source materials for evoking the presence of God.
Wired World is explosive. It is rich in the use of contemporary imagery, personal experience, commentary, and creative illustrations. Wired World recognized that the electronic revolution is a fact of twentieth (twentieth-first) century being and that it exerts an unprecedented influence on our predominantly secular consumer society. In the cacophonous intensity of deafening electronic sound the appearance of reality becomes its own reality. Art and reality obscure each other. One possible implication of this aspect to reality is that meaning in being has become lost. The Church, Sample argued, offers hope to this wired world. The Church needs to drop its "holier than thou" posturing and infiltrate.
Sample, a grandfather, and an astute observer of our times, expressed worry at the Church's inability to convey its values to his and our children and grandchildren. Sample deliberately set on a course of self-education and invited the reader to journey with him. The church in its apparent irrelevance to the North American electronic culture, Sample argues, may have a metaphoric `window of vulnerability' to counteract this illusion. Engagement, not dismissal, is essential if the church is going to be at all relevant to this wired world.
Sample quoted Emile Durkheim, the French sociologist, two times! This is a sure sign to pay attention. Sample wrote: "[Durkheim] observed that when you get people in close physical proximity to one another, focus their attention on a common object, and engage them in exercises that arouse emotion, bonding occurs" (57, 84). The type of bonding that occurs in massive electronic musical rally experiences is not the specific type of bonding the Church advocates. The question is: "How can the Church use Durkheim's observation, the fact of an electronic culture, and its own desire to fulfill the Great Commission?" The answer seems to fall under the adage: "If you cannot beat them, join them." In this case, "join" does not mean become as "they are." Join means to be with "them" in their environment, learn their language, use their imaging, and interpret the message of Christ using their own ways and means to "speak" to their condition.
Sample's conclusion is precise: "The call here is for a church that will `imitate' Christ to pitch tent, to embody itself, to take form in the indigenous practices of our time, not for the purpose of accommodation to the world but rather to be God's people. It is a twofold effort: To join the practices of an electronic culture, on the one hand, and to keep faith with the story of Christ on the other. In worship this will mean taking up the practices of spectacle and faithfulness to the biblical narrative and to the integrity of Christian liturgy" (122).
The Cross of Christ may represent the intersection of the Eternal Christ with the Principalities and Powers of the World. In the case of the wired world Christ and culture meet anew to discover old truths. Christ is accessible to culture. Christ is able to meet culture. Christ is both in and above culture available to all cultures. Sample opened the thought that Christ and the wired world need to engage for mutual enrichment. The Christian Church simply needs to apply the principles of syncretism to the culture of the wired world as it has to other cultures in other times.

Tex Sample, The Spectacle of Worship in a Wired World: Electronic Culture and the Gathered People of God (Nashville: Abingdon, 1998)

Sample explains how the electronic culture of generations born after 1945 involves a whole different way of experiencing and knowing the world, and argues that the church and especially its worship needs to adapt. He does an amazing job of contrasting his older generation's music, dancing, and ways of thinking with younger generations, drawing on his own wide cultural experiences, explorations in worship leading, and literature on generational and communication differences. Sample says meaning now comes from images, sound as beat (evidenced in music especially rock), and visualization (so that teenagers today can aptly be called `screenagers'). The sort of indigenous practices that electronic culture produces include spectacle and performance, soul music and dance. These practices build identity, community, stories to live by, ethics and worship, and so Sample urges they be embraced and used to help younger generations experience worship. He is not hesitant to critique the dehumanizing elements in electronic culture, and he argues for the ongoing use of the lectionary and traditional patterns of worship. Yet he models an approach to worship that seeks to transform culture from a place of incarnation within it.

Originally reviewed in Darren Cronshaw `The Emerging Church: Spirituality and Worship Reading Guide.' Zadok Papers S159 (Autumn 2008).

Tex Sample is a student of modern culture and media. His grasp of the history, scope, and influence of our electronic culture provide a great resource for understanding our day and age. Coupled with Sample's heart for worship among the gathered people of God, he sets forth a challenge for the church to connect with today's culture.

For the church to connect with modern culture Sample asserts that it must become involved with and participate in the indigenous practices of its people (19). Samples spends much time expounding modern electronic culture trends in terms of engaging the world through images, sound as beat, and visualization.

While much of his analysis of electronic culture was insightful, I found much of it to be unhelpful rhetoric. Sample's sample worship service closing his book, instead of convincing me of the validity of his suggestions throughout the book, were more absurd than useful - Singing Frank Sinatra's My Way as lead into confession? Come on.

The most challenging section of the book dealt with the church being and incarnational presence among the people. As Christ became flesh and pitched tent among us, so too should we enter into the world and culture around us and dwell among the people. What better way to understand the needs and cultural nuances of the society and age in which we live. Furthermore, Sample's reminder that incarnation is more than just God becoming a part of our world, in reality it is a "disclosure that the world is part of God's story" (106). The church is still a distinctive culture with a distinctive message that needs to be communicated through modern means in an electronic culture.