Camera in churches. WHY?
If you follow the local social media trends in Ethiopia, you can see that one of the new shiny things is content from evangelical (aka ጴንጤ) church services being posted across the Internet. They range from highly informative and edifying content to highly meme-able cringe-worthy moments. For instance, if you see Pastor Daniel or Dr. Mamusha you will surely find food for your soul. But if you see ቶለሳ… you may find the memes funny, but they’re useless for the soul. To my surprise, that meme even made it to the urban dictionary. *1
And now photos from Sunday worship sessions are taking the stage. The people behind it are the church media team, who actively take photographs of preachers, singers and the audience.
Now that you know what I am gonna talk about, for the sake of clarity, let us take a step back and define a word that I am gonna use quite a lot.
What is a church?
Contrary to popular belief, a church is NOT a building. It’s the people. Its the believers. Its the followers of Christ.*2
So when I say “church”, I mean the group of believers . And in this blog I only mean that in the context of the ethiopian evangelical community (aka ጴንጤ).
Whenever I want to talk about the building, I will say “church hall.”
I believe the church exists mainly to do these
— Worship God
— Tell other people about Jesus
— Disciple newcomers according to the teachings of Jesus
— Be a community to support each other
And the Sunday morning church services are meant to gather the church for prayer, worship and listening to the word of God.
Additionally, social media can be used to reach out to people who may not be able to make it to your physical Church location (such as those who are sick or homebound). *3
Many of us these days just scroll through posts while others use social media to gain fame and fortune. And only few use it to educate. And churches can do that too. (not the fame and fortune part 😊)
It’s a great tool to spread the word about the love of God and promote positive biblical values to people.
And you might ask, how does my personal photo taken while I was having a sacred moment of worship in a Sunday service help achieve the God-given purpose of the church?
My answer is No. It doesn’t. Well most of the time. Here’s why.
First thing: you don’t go to a church hall to get a fancy photoshoot. You go there to meet your Creator. You go there to pray and ask for guidance.
Second: trying to get a good facial expression only distracts you from worship. You miss the point of being there in the first place.
But if its done in a mindful way it can motivate people who see your pictures on the phone to worship too.
And If you happen to leave the town that your home church is located for various reasons, You will feel at home whenever you see your brother and sisters at home.
This photo + text format is dominating for mainly two reasons.
1. Most of our local churches can’t afford live streams. The equipments are expensive and not easy to find in the local market.
2.Stable live streams require a minimum of 10mbps upload speed. And getting a reliable internet connection is such የውሃ በረሃ.
3. Preachers are humans too. They can make mistakes. And once you stream something into cyberspace, it will live there forever. To avoid that, I think posting censored text is suitable.
What do I suggest?
For the church:
If you go to a church hall that posts photos and you don’t want to be captured…
Openly tell the camera crew not to take your photo. Most church photographers I met are humble to comply. Or you can sit next to a window. It’s NOT easy to take a clear image of a person on most DSLR cameras from that position.
For my dear fellow church photographers:
Please, let’s avoid being a distraction to the church. Lets, learn to move slowly. Take more wide shots. I recommend 2 to three people in the picture. One-person closeup shots are like a sword sharpened on both sides. They can distract the worshiper from praying and after it is posted they take the focus away from the main message of the week.
For media teams:
We worship the Creator of the universe. And He is the source of all creativity. Lets come up with clever ways to approach social media besides that regular photo+text format.
I hope you remember what zeritu’s production team attempted during her ‘ኢየሱስ ያድናል” Music video. *4 Legally speaking, unless otherwise stated, taking pictures of people in public spaces is not punishable. (Hey, Law students please correct me if I am wrong here) But if we made people uncomfortable not to come closer to Christ that such a huge loss.
For the scholars:
I volunteered in the media team at Full Gospel Believers local church, hawassa since my late highschool years. So, I wrote this article from my what i witnessed. Since more churches are joining the trend we need a very well researched article so we may use these tech properly for the glory of God and the advancement of His Kingdom.
P E A C E
#realtseg #opinion #church
#mediateam #theGospel
1: https://is.gd/tolUD
2: Acts 2:47, 1stChor. 1:2
3: https://is.gd/LChurchSM
4: The original video is removed from her youtube channel.
