The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media Shapes Faith, the Gospel, and Church

THE HIDDEN POWER OF ELECTRONIC CULTURE: HOW MEDIA SHAPES FAITH, THE GOSPEL AND CHURCH is essential reading for any believer who wants to understand how gospel is presented through media filters. From questions of the neutrality issue in media analysis to cultural opportunities the church has missed and how the church can take advantage of cultural trends, THE HIDDEN POWER OF ELECTRONIC CULTURE addresses the needs, concerns and future of a dynamic church structure.

The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture is undeniably one of the most significant books that I've read this year. Shane Hipps has taken the discussion of changing forms in church - whether worship, or preaching, or leadership, or church governance - and raised a new, often ignored set of questions. He states this in his introduction: "A host of books and articles have been written on what has changed and how the church ought to respond to those changes. However, few writers have made a serious effort to understand why these changes have occurred...I propose that the answers to the question of why these changes have come about can be found in part by exploring the nature and effects of media and technology on culture." (p. 16-17) And this is exactly what this book does. Hipps proposes a model in which these questions can be considered and then uses that model to tackle some of the pressing form-related questions that the western church faces at the beginning of the twenty-first century. To be sure, much of the book is an application of Marshall McLuhan's writings from the mid- to late-twentieth century. But, for those (like myself) who have never read McLuhan, he distills the essence of McLuhan's thought and connects it with current discussion and debate. For those who have already read McLuhan, I suspect that the book may offer just as much for exactly those reasons. In short, this is a wonderful, readable book that will aid the church in her often tumultuous dialogue with a media-savvy culture.

If you have anything to do with media or technology at your church, you need to read this. Shane Hipps skillfully identifies and describes basic media inventions that have had enormous impacts upon Western civilization. So all consuming are the resulting cultural shifts that we often no longer recognize their birth was caused, in part, by technology we now take for granted. That is the hidden power behind the electronic culture that Shane wants to unveil for us. Once we begin to grasp the concept that the medium is the message, we begin to understand that we should not reduce the use of media and technology as just a tool "useful for dispensing the gospel (pg. 38)... As we will see, these media forms have a profound effect on our faith - an effect that goes far beyond their content (pg. 39)."

"I contend the medium of print shaped the modern church in ways we are only beginning to recognize in the wake of postmodernism. Only when we study these changes can we begin to perceive the impact for the other forms of media on our understanding of community, leadership, and worship." Shane Hipps. Like the proverbial frog in the pot of water, I have grown up in a culture saturated with electronic media. I remember going to Sunday School as a young boy, and talking with my classmates about what we had watched on TV the night before. Little did I know that the media we shared was creating the community that we were becoming. Shane Hipps in his book The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture, deftly explores how the things we do influence who we are. Things that we don't think about have enormous impact on what and how we think. I have read theology and sociology treatises on the modern / postmodern rift in our society. For the first time, thanks to Shane, I see causal relationships between historical technological events, and the worldviews that emerged in their wake. To ignore this insight is to run the risk of what I call the hardening of the categories. Understanding the post-modern experience is a cross cultural journey and this book can serve as a tour guide to the trip. In Chapter Six the treatise on conflict and how to deal with it is worth the price of the book many times over. If you are a thinking Christian--not an oxymoron--you will find Shane's work ranking up with the likes of Dallas Willard, and Marva Dawn. It is scholarly, pleasingly readable, and insightful to the point of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. David Wheat, Merrimack NH

As a young professor at Goshen College in the 1960s I bumped into a professional challenge. I had come upon Marshall McLuhan's books which introduced an entirely new way of thinking about the media. (Later we used the term paradigm shift.) McLuhan found his way into my course syllabuses and coffee conversations. A friend once told me that I was totally McLuhan-washed. Problem was, the profession didn't have a very good word for McLuhan. Stylists scoffed at his style; communicologists asked for his research methodology; and the qualitative analysts couldn't find coherence in McLuhan's broad shot. Was something wrong with me that I so revered the Toronto seer? Forty years later a former student called me. "Check out Shane Hipps' book." I am pleased to recommend a McLuhan inspired The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture. I look through a rear-view mirror and wonder how much better my own classes might have been had I, in the 1960s and 1970s, come upon this kind of interpretation and application of McLuhan's seminal work. Hipps is a deeply spiritual pastor; his book, subtitled "How Media Shapes(sic) Faith, The Gospel, and Church" offers him an opportunity to explore the "cultural engagement" of people of faith. McLuhan never struck me as particularly religious, but I am sure he would approve of how Hipps has appropriated his thought. Central to McLuhan's understanding was that media (Why did Zondervan make the noun singular on the cover?) are "dynamic forces with power to shape us, regardless of content." Hipps smartly pulls together the widest range of McLuhan's writing to suggest more precisely the nature of the dynamic forces. He identifies McLuhan's "four laws" of media. The media extend..., the media make obsolete..., the media reverse into ..., and the media retrieve... . A useful exercise, then, is to explore what does a medium extend? what does a medium make obsolete? What does a medium reverse into? And what does a medium retrieve? Like McLuhan, Hipps uses the print media as the contrasting backdrop to a study of electronic media. Beginning with chapter 4, the book lends itself to provocative churchly discussions, although I am of the opinion that the typical lay leader who fails to make a careful study of McLuhan could stray from the principles that guide Hipps' discussions and simply opt for the latest church experiment. Be sure to wrestle with Hipps contrast of the Apostle Paul's method of discourse and that of Jesus. If you grasp this contrast, you will be well on your way to understanding Hipps' perspectives on metaphor, sign and symbol, story, emotional involvement and community.