Snack Culture & the Church
Last night I read Wired's March feature on "Snack Culture." The entire feature is well done. I found Nancy Miller's article Minifesto for a New Age to be especially articulate and timely. The article provides a brief survey and analysis of this emerging culture that now surrounds us--the way of life that Wired has labeled the culture of "Snack," "Bite-Size Entertainment," and "One-Minute Media." Here's the 5th paragraph of the article:
"Today, media snacking is a way of life. In the morning, we check news and tap out emails on our laptops. At work, we graze all day on videos and blogs. Back home, the giant HDTV is for 10-course feasting - say, an entire season of 24. In between are the morsels that fill those whenever minutes, as your mobile phone carrier calls them: a 30-second game on your Nintendo DS, a 60-second webisode on your cell, a three-minute podcast on your MP3 player."
If you'd like to read the whole article, you can do so here. You can also view the interactive, somewhat silly, yet helpful/educational Epic History of Snack Culture right here.I believe that the church has a lot of thinking to do about how we're to best relate to, live within, and challenge Snack Culture. In the coming years I imagine that many local churches will feel increased pressure to radically conform to Snack Culture--offering bite-sized sermonettes, podcastable community, and mini-ministry downloads. I also believe that many other local churches will protest so loudly against the emerging culture that they'll lose touch and not know how to love, engage, and reach their neighbors with the gospel.As the church sizes up how methods and media are becoming increasingly "snackable," the important thing is that we let our theology shape our methodology, rather than blindly accepting or rejecting the increasingly snack oriented methods that surround us. And at the center of our theology ought to stand Jesus, a Savior who incarnated into 1st century Jewish culture and who calls Christians to engage their present cultures. Yet this same Savior also sits high upon a throne, ruling over all cultures, and calling Christians to thoughtfully hold fast against cultural trends that obscure the gospel. If we get our theology right, we'll do fine at figuring out what ministry methods to use in today's Snack Culture.