The World of the Spoken Word

The Millennium Matrix by Rex Miller presents an interesting analysis of our present time and a unique tool for understanding the cultural diversity in the modern church. While Generational Theory has been applied liberally in recent years to try to make sense of differing preferences about everything from worship styles to coffee choices, Miller employs an alternative lens to that of “age” to help church leaders understand the diversity within their congregations.

Rex Miller argues that culture is largely determined by the dominant communication tool available to a given society. That dominant mode of communication shapes our perception of the world, our relationships with in it, our preferred form of interaction and the institutions that rise from those relational interactions. Miller says our primary means of communication has changed three times since the time of Jesus of Nazareth. Because the speed at which our world has been changing, Miller argues that many of us have experienced two of those communication changes in our lifetime and that many of our churches have people in them who operate from three different preferred world views. This could certainly explain some of the culture wars in the church!

So what are these different world views and modes of communication? Miller says our primary tool of communication has changed from the spoken word, to the written word, to the broadcast – image word and finally to the digital multimedia word. With each change people have developed a new and different way of seeing the world. (p. 15)

Over the course of these next few blogs I hope to describe the way each mode of communication has affected the culture that has used or is presently using it. I also hope to talk about how that mode of communication has effected how we communicate in the church, and especially how we worship God.

So let’s begin! The first communication era in the life of the church was the era of spoken word or oral communication. In many ways this is the hardest kind of communication for modern people to get their minds around because none of us have ever existed in a strictly oral culture. We have always known the printed word. Most of us grew up with at least the radio, if not movies and television. Still many of us have broadened our world to include the digital age of computers and the World Wide Web. That would include all of you reading this blog.

In order to understand the world of the oral tradition we need to imagine a much quieter world, without the constant sound of the television in the next room or the radio in our car or our cell phones ringing with messages or texts. We even have to imagine a world without books, magazines or newspapers. Everything we know would come by the word of someone else in our lives. This of course means that people were incredibly important, and a trusted teacher was invaluable. Truth was determined by the reliability of the messenger and often the message and the messenger were one. It kind of gives new meaning to John’s words when he said of Christ, “The word became flesh and dwelled among us.” (John 1: 14) One can imagine that Jesus’ words were captivating. Every story was laced with deeper meaning. One word from him could heal the blind man, restore strength to crippled limbs and even raise the dead. The spoken word from God’s agent had power.

God’s word was also spoken by prophets, priests, teachers and messengers. We call that spoken word revelation. Though much of those spoken words would eventually be written down for remembrance, their power was still in their re- presentation as when the book of the law was rediscovered in the time of Josiah. It was read aloud to the King who tore his clothes in grief for the unfaithfulness of his people. (II Kings 22:11) Ultimately God’s revelation came in the person of Jesus Christ who communicated God’s word to us in everything that he said and did.

Not too surprisingly the worship that developed out of the world of spoken word was rather mystical. The experience centered around the reenactment of the holy story in which God made God’s self present to the people. In the absence of great literacy and knowledge of the Biblical narrative, stories were retold in bits and reenacted through a calendar of feast days. The central event of worship became the receiving of the mystical presence of Christ in the sacrament of communion.

As places of worship developed the architecture attempted to inspire a sense of awe in the presence of God. Church sanctuaries featured high ceilings to evoke the magnificence of God and great beauty in order to draw the worshiper into God’s heavenly realm. The building was part of the story intended to restore the worshiper to his or her right place in God’s universe. Art was symbolic, without the perspective of the viewer that would develop later. Rather it was understood that the mystical union between heaven and earth could best be represented by symbol. The music of the church developed around chant which retold Biblical story or articulated theological truth in simple single line melodies that are almost mesmerizing to the ear.

Again I will reiterate that a lot of what we say about this early form of communication and its effect on the church is difficult for our modern minds to grasp. This kind of worship and world view are largely absent in present culture. One finds a small sense of the spoken word world in a visit to a monastery or in participating in a Taize worship service or an equivalent. However, this world view and its corresponding worship experience will always be outside our ability to really know it. We simply can never dismiss the impact of all we know through the written, broadcast and digital word that has shaped our lives. So we probably better to move to understand forces upon us. More on this coming soon in my next blog!