I came across an interview with Rob Bell and Shane Hipps on the Out of Ur website this morning, and the subject they discuss in the interview is the role of “the medium” in proclaiming the message of the gospel. This is a timely discussion as we see a lot of church-growth initiatives rely more and more on video screens. Just yesterday I sat with an old friend who is a pastor in the area and this issue came up: how new generations are being shaped by technology and how the church is responding to that.

Shane was a TA for one of my preaching classes at Fuller, and he offered a great deal of encouragement and affirmation to me as a preacher, for which I was grateful. I was pregnant with Mercy at the time of the class, and I remember feeling a bit self-conscious in my mostly male class. It was my first preaching class at Fuller and I hadn’t realized it but I was still slightly haunted by my experience at North Park Seminary where a male student shared during the feedback time in a preaching class that my eyelashes were too distracting. I remember debating what to wear when I gave my first sermon to the class and thinking about how to minimize the fact that a child was growing in my belly, fearing the ways that would “distract”. All that to say, Shane was great, and it was fun to see him in this video sharing about a topic that he is passionate about.

I would love to hear any responses to what he suggests in this brief interview with Rob…