The Art of Ministry in a Technological Age

If you serve in ministry, do you think of yourself more as an artist or a technician? I'm more of a 'both/and' person than an 'either/or' on questions like this, but the world we inhabit has made it increasingly difficult for these two identities and approaches to meet in the vocation of ministry. Taking a quick survey of the landscape around me today, there's a lot of pressure on pastors and others to think of themselves as technicians and train themselves as technicians. In this short series of posts, I'm going to engage this issue, not only to raise the question, but also to hopefully infuse some joy into the vocation of ministry. Burnout usually follows closely after ministry losing a sense of joy. If doing ministry like a technician has been squeezing the joy of ministry, maybe it's time to tap into the artistic side of our calling.

A Technological Culture

I'm no enemy of using technology, but I am becoming more and more aware that we are living in a technological world that shapes our imaginations on just about everything, including ministry. Not only are our imaginations technological, but our identities were technological. In our eating, our drinking, our waking and our sleeping, we are technological people.

​Being a technological people may have a lot to do with how many times we pick up a cell phone to send our kids a text message rather than walking upstairs to tell them that dinner is ready, but it probably has more to do with the way in which our technology has shaped us to see the world. The technology that we began to use – things like gas engines, interstates, air travel, assembly lines, computers and the internet – started to tell us that the world was under our control. No longer were nature, distance or ignorance things which had power over us, but now, we began to be able to shape the world, to use our technologies to make it less of a wilderness, to iron out the wrinkles that make life difficult, and to enjoy the incredible promises of advances in transportation, medicine and information sharing.

Even our worship and ministry bears the benefits of technology: you don’t need to know Greek or Hebrew when preparing a sermon anymore, because there’s Bible software that will know it for you. The absence of a forgetful parishioner’s tithe check doesn’t ever have to be a problem again, because the funds can now be automatically withdrawn from her bank account each week. Busy members of our congregations who travel for work on Sunday don’t need to miss your sermon because they can download it as a podcast and listen to it in the car on the way to their Monday morning appointment. Undoubtedly, technology brings with it incredible benefits, but every benefit comes with a cost. Perhaps this is why George Grant, a philosopher who studied technology, was so fond of the old Spanish proverb: “Take what you want, said God – take it and pay for it.”

What are the costs of being a technological people? Arguably, one of the biggest costs may be that we are a people who have been so shaped by the technology we use that it has robbed us of our ability to see the beauty of our vocations – even ministerial vocations. If we look back at the roots of the word ‘technology,’ we see that it comes from the Greek word techne, meaning art or craft. In the ancient mind, techne was the kind of thing one did for the sake of the beauty in performing the task. Think of a sculptor sitting in front of a piece of marble, chisel in hand. The sculptor looks over the rough surfaces of the raw stone, runs one hand over the rock, and carefully begins to apply the wisdom of his craft. He knows how the marble will react to his tools, he knows just which tool to use to bring out the desired effect, and he knows all this because he is deeply familiar with his craft. Only after a deep familiarity with the art of sculpture can he do the work of unveiling the beauty that hides inside the stone, and in unveiling the beauty of the sculpture, he also reveals the beauty of his craft, of his techne.

​But in the time of technology, techne took on a different meaning. On the lips of a deeply technological people, the word became ‘technique’ rather than ‘art’ and this began to shape our imaginations so that what we once thought of as artful vocations are now seen as technical jobs. For example, whereas politics was once understood to be the art of governing justly, it might now be said that politics is more about using the right techniques – slogans, sound bites, slander and opinion polling – to be elected; the good politician is the one who can use the best technique. The business leaders, I fear, are not formed to think of their work in terms of creatively and imaginatively introducing new services to new markets, but understand their work in terms of using the right technique to achieve outcomes. As a technological people, we have come to be shaped by the technology we use, to understand that we are good when we can apply the best technique, so that those things which were once our tools now suggest to us that they have the ability to make us into better politicians, business leaders and pastors. The problem is that tools can only get you as far as technique – they can’t make the user into a more imaginative artist.

Could it be that pastors in a technological world are subjected to the same kinds of pressures? Could it be that ministry in a technological world is now defined in terms of simply using the right method, skill or technique? I wonder sometimes if our technological vision of the world has transformed the vocation of ministry from an artistic and creative call to preach the good news of Christ into a mere job in which ministers of the gospel are seen as good pastors if they simply employ the right techniques. The deluge of best-selling pastoral ‘how-to’ books, blogs and articles may provide an answer to my wondering.

Pastoral Identity in a Technological Age

The implications of ministering in a technological age also apply to questions of identity. In our imaginations, do we understand ourselves to be pastoral artisans, or achievers of technique? If your congregation is anything like mine, you can probably recount the ways in which our people have been formed to think of pastors as those who need to execute the right techniques: to preach the right way, to counsel the right way, to administrate the right way to achieve proper outcomes. Fulfilling one’s responsibilities is certainly a good thing, but I wonder how much the techniques we use in ministry begin to tell us who we are as pastors.

In a technological world, technicians are the masters of their machines. They can replace, operate and tinker until their machine does exactly what it’s supposed to do. But the irony of the situation is that the machine actually becomes the master of the technician, for the technician’s skills and knowledge are only valuable in relationship to this particular machine. Refrigerator technicians are only valuable if they can make a refrigerator refrigerate. If, after a visit from a technician, your refrigerator does anything other than refrigerate (even if it now makes toast or dries your laundry), the technician’s vocation can be called into serious question. The value of a technical vocation is rarely novelty.

Artists, on the other hand, do not command their materials as much as they work with them to bring out the potential of beauty that the media suggest. The media with which artists work also don’t make any kind of value claim on the artist, because the artist’s vocation isn’t necessarily found in forming the media in only one particular way. Unlike the refrigerator technician, artists are not charged with making their media do only one thing or act in only one way, but are instead freed to bring new expressions of beauty into being. The value of an artistic vocation often embraces experimentation and novelty, especially when those expressions spring out of the particularity of the artist’s location or context.

What might vocational identity look like in a technological time? It’s not that we must use the latest and greatest technology to be good pastors, and it’s not even that using this technology means that we are selling our souls. It’s more that we need to see technology for what it is – a useful tool. When technology becomes the tool, pastors can be the artists.

In part two, I'm going to make a few suggestions for the way a ministry vocation can be artistic and joyful. If you'd like to be notified when it's available, you can sign up here.