I missed this piece of news last Sunday but, according to the Sunday Telegraph, it appears that Lambeth Palace have plans to broadcast the Archbishop of Canterbury’s sermons via YouTube.
Where do I begin with this one?
I certainly don’t disagree with the motivations to try and reach young people and/or the Internet generation. Indeed, I would agree that using YouTube to do so is a very good idea and, done well, could generate a great deal of good.
However, that is the key – “done well”. I’m sorry to say that even if Rowan gives us his very best on YouTube (and I like his sermons and his thinking as much as anyone), there isn’t the slightest hope that it will come across well. It simply does not fit the medium.
As Gill describes it, posting the Archbishop’s sermons on YouTube is the cultural equivalent of:
“like building a large Victorian church in an Indian fishing village”
I can understand why Lambeth think it’s a good idea. The CofE never has much (any?) money to put into such projects and it looks like a gift – a free website, to which you can contribute easily, that people are using and is a current cultural phenomenon, and with a gifted leader ready on tap – you just need to put a digital camera in front of him and bob’s your uncle.
But it doesn’t work like that. YouTube doesn’t work like that. Culturally, this idea is so far away from culturally sensitive mission that I am incredulous that we can be so aware of cross-cultural issues in our efforts to reach out internationally and yet can’t see it when it’s on our own doorstep.
If the CofE want to get into YouTube, then please please CofE do it properly. First of all, you need your central office’s Mission department to be given staff and resources to dedicate purely to what one might call “national mission”… using the kind of tools (which is mainly media based) to scatter seeds of the gospel as widely across our country as possible. Secondly, with such dedicated resources and thinking in place, the stage would be set to provide video material that is going to work in contexts like YouTube.
I don’t think Rob Bell and the Nooma videos have it all absolutely spot on and obviously they are American and so we’d need to look for English cultural equivalents, but they are a lot closer to something that might work than this idea from Lambeth. It’s also fairly obvious from the Nooma example that to do something like this really well takes money and dedication to the task, not throwing it at YouTube as a by-product of something else.
The Lambeth spokesman said:
“It provides limitless access to what any minister has to say. You have to preach where people are listening.”
That statement sums up the wrong-ness of the thinking in this idea. People on YouTube are not listening to “preaching”. It’s a collaborative enterprise, it’s an interactive enterprise, it’s a “no barriers to entry” kind of enterprise. In short, everything that your average sermon is not… especially someone as learned as the Archbishop… and I say that as a very big fan of Rowan.
Still, the CofE isn’t getting everything wrong in the world of new media. Today, they announced that this year’s Love Life, Live Lent course from Church House Publishing is being supported by a website and, crucially, by a simple little SMS text message service by which you can get the daily Lenten tips straight to your mobile phone.
Again, the key as to why this will work is content and medium. The Love Life, Live Lent books are very simple and have a great secular crossover. It’s not about deep theological reflection, rather the adult and child versions simply ask those participating to think of doing one thing for every day of Lent. Things like “write a letter to say thankyou” or “give up your place in the queue to someone in a rush”. They’re dead easy ways to be “generous, think of others and make a difference” as its own website describes it. In short, they suit a simple SMS message really well. Especially when they’ve been reasonably priced at 10p a message or basically about £4.00 for the whole of Lent.
I’m signing up.
However, even with this Lent course, the CofE still have managed to make a few real faux pas’ in the world of new media. I cry to have to highlight this but get a load of these chronic mistakes on the Love Life, Live Lent website:
- They are using livelent.net as the published web address. They bought lovelifelivelent.net as well but aren’t using it and, worst of all, if you go there it doesn’t even zip you across to the real site. It leaves you on a domain host’s holding page. I can understand the thought that the latter might be too long a domain name, but at least link it through if you are going to buy it.
- The entire supporting website is built in Flash. If you don’t have Flash on your computer, or are if you disabled and using a text to speech reader or other similar device, you’ll get nothing. As Jakob Nielsen has said, Flash is 99% bad.
- The site uses pop-up new windows all over the place for PDFs (see below) and other sections. Again, our friend Jakob explains why this is so bad?
- Various things use PDF files when they don’t need to use PDFs and could have been done in the context of the site (for example, the terms and conditions for the SMS service). Again, Jakob talks about this faux pas in the above article.
- Relying on the navigation bar for linking and not using the text itself to provide links. Check this sentence out “If you’d like your church or school to get involved take a look at the support material available by clicking on either ‘Churches’ or ‘Schools’ in the above header.” Why not just use the words ‘church’ and ‘school’ as links and re-word much more simply to suit.
Apologies if some of these criticisms are a bit geeky for most… I had to get my frustrations off my chest! But even if they are geeky, they’re important. They all prevent the CofE from using new media as well as it could to promote the gospel and reach out to our nation. They are equivalent in the “offline” world to not having disabled access to our churches, advertising service times and then starting an hour earlier for those “in the know” or talking a language people don’t understand.
Once again, for the CofE and the world of new media it feels like one step forward and two steps back.
To explain the cultural reference for those reading from overseas, the headline and image are taken from the comedian Harry Enfield’s character Frank Doberman. Examples of Doberman’s work can be seen in these Madasafish adverts.
** update **
I tried to sign up to the text messaging service today. What do you know? It doesn’t work. My text won’t send to the advertised number at all.
** further update **
It turns out the service isn’t live yet – which is a real shame given the press coverage it has garnered. As Ben Wilson makes clear in his comment, the service is underway but it does seem some (including me) are having problems signing up.
Hands-free worship explores the influence of projection technology on worship. We shape our technology but is it shaping us?
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The story in the Telegraph today said the service would start ‘from tomorrow’. If so (1) the site should say so, and (2) that is a huge missed opportunity, as the Sun carried the telephone number today. I suspect Sun readers won’t be cutting the article out of the paper and texting it at a later date.
Dear Dave,
Thank you for your recent posts on our Love Life Live Lent campaign, and for helping to spread the message about the booklets, website and text messages.
In response to your constructive feedback, we have added the bounce from the URL you mention to the heavily promoted http://www.livelent.net address – thanks for the suggestion. This was not done before because, as far as we were aware, nobody outside the project team knew about the previously secured URL that you include in your first post on the topic (although we could be wrong).
More importantly, I am writing to address your recent update on the service ‘not even being live yet’. People are already registering for the Love Life Live Lent SMS service, which begins sending messages on Monday 19 February – as made clear in the news story on our website to which you kindly link.
The problem seems to be that The Sun accidentally printed the incorrect number (they printed 64323). By texting ‘Lent’ to 64343, you will be registered to start receiving the messages from 19th February. All the information provided to the media was correct – it was clearly a simple typing error at The Sun’s end.
It’s great that the media has picked up on this innovative campaign and we are handling a wide range of enquiries from across the country. http://www.livelent.net, and the news release to which you link, both prominently display the correct text number, and The Sun have agreed to run a correction.
Thank for your interest in the campaign and we look forward to hearing the results of what happens when, come Lent, a certain ordinand follows the daily suggestions
All the best,
Ben Wilson
Church of England Communications Office
http://www.lovelifelivelent.net/ does now appear to redirect, at least for me.
Ben
Thanks for taking the time to comment on this blog when I know you are a very busy man. Thanks too for doing what you can to respond by linking up the domain names as I suggested.
I would like to add that the reason it’s not working for me is not the Sun. I first tried to sign up on Sunday based on your press release and the accompanying website’s information. I have been trying 64343 since Sunday without success.
I have emailed you “off-blog” to give you some more details of my phone in case that helps but it does appear all is not entirely well with the technicalities of the service.
Thanks too for the challenge in your final para Рtouch̩! I feel I have no choice given my original critique but to carry out these challenges and report back on them here.
Very best wishes
David
Dear David,
Thanks for your post and email.
Following a day of investigations, we are now in a position to clarify the technical problems we have faced and the action we have taken to deal with them. Our own findings suggest that users of one particular mobile network and payment method are the only users experiencing problems with the service. Our SMS service provider is committed to investigating the situation thoroughly and at this stage has offered the following statement:
“We are currently experiencing delays delivering messages to all mobile
networks across all shortcodes. All inbound and outbound messages are being queued at the gateway and will be delivered as soon as the problems have been resolved.
This is a temporary problem and all messages will spool until the connections are established again. No messages are being lost during this time. We are aiming to have normal gateway services to all networks resumed by 9:00am on the 25th January.â€
We would like to apologise for these unforeseen problems and for the frustration this has caused. To confirm, all these issues should be rectified by tomorrow morning. If you continue to experience problems after this time, please email webmaster@livelent.net including details of your handset and phone network, and we will look into the issue as soon as possible.
This is the first time that the Church of England has experimented with operating communications over a range of multi-new-media platforms, and we very much appreciate the feedback and suggestions that you and your readers have posted. Advancing these frontiers was always going to be eventful, but your combined comments have helped us iron out these issues rapidly – it is genuinely appreciated.
Best Wishes,
Ben Wilson
Church of England Communications Office, London
Dave and Jakob sitting in a tree, proselytising usability…
On the Youtube front, I guess like you I’m not sure about the idea that CofE is suggesting. I wonder if publishing the sermons in the context of a video podcast would work better. It makes them accessible, but as with most podcasts, the viewer would effectively have chosen to seek out the video. I guess this probably goes against any thinking that this is an act of mission.
Hi Ali
I don’t think it changes anything in terms of mission or not. If it was on YouTube, the person would still have to go find it (although it’s existence would be more obvious). Either way you are still “pulling” it down rather than having it being “pushed” at you. But yes, I agree with you streamed or podcasted (or both) from the Lambeth website seems a better option to me.
Dave
Still trying to get my SMS Love Life Live Lent to work by the way….
I just texted the Love Lent thing, and it seems to have worked (as of 8:45p).
You sure it isn’t like broadcasting voodo ceremonies in High Definition? Maybe they can throw something in against gay people adopting children…
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