Pictures, Moments, Emotions

“Pictures. Moments. Emotions.”

This is a quote from Lester, p.466 in the context of how images are used to capture negative moments. However, this sentence stood out to me as to how churches can use images to create moments and to create emotions. The implications I see for congregations are on how churches can use technology and images in services to creative an atmosphere.

By this, I mean that a church can engage people with what they see in everyday life, not how most operate, which is artwork that is static e.g a display from Sunday school which is modern (which churches seem to consider being anything 5-10 years ago). The art, images and video we use is dated and not correspondent to most people’s heavily image driven lives. I know in this there are huge sweeping generalisations but overall, they are accurate from my experience and so the above quotes becomes a challenge to Church.

How are we using pictures, how are we creating moments and how are we releasing people into various emotions? The potential to do this is enormous, but requires time and money to be done well. The main challenge of the quote is about engagement with culture and with people, something Jesus came to do and still longs for.