A few months ago, I was asked by smallgroups.com to write a short article on using videos to teach which they published in their e-newsletter. Since it was never added to our site, I thought I’d post it here:
My first memory of watching a video in church was in youth group. It was the early 1980ís when VHS was still new so I must have been in 5th or 6th grade. The video was a movie about the rapture – its name momentarily escapes me – and I remember two particular things about it.
First, the image didnít look that great. To my young eye (already well-trained by countless hours of watching TV) it seemed a bit unprofessional. As a result, I remember thinking the film seemed a touch melodramatic. Whether or not this particular instance influenced my ultimate views on eschatology, I honestly canít say: but it did register in my mind as a touch embarrassing.
The second thing I remember was a scene where a young, unbelieving teenager comes into the kitchen looking for her mother and sees a broken glass with spilled milk (or something like that) all over the kitchen floor and she realizes the rapture has happened and she didnít get taken so she just stands there and screams. I recall all of us 5th and 6th graders sitting there in hushed silence, a bit stunned, not wanting to end up like that screaming girl.
The point of me saying all this is that at least 25 years have come and gone and I still remember my introduction to video in church. Since then, Iíve seen lots of different kinds of videos used in group teaching settings: taped conferences, Christian films, speaker series with talking heads, documentaries, secular films, and so forth. Most of it seems pretty blurry now and I canít always remember the lesson.
But I still remember my first impression. Although there are likely any number of reasons for this, I think a few key lessons about using video in small groups can be gleaned from it.
First, video content is judged by video quality. Call this a variation on McLuhanís maxim, but almost everyone youíre going to have in your small group knows whatís professional and whatís not. Secular TV and film have set the standard and everyone can tell it when they donít see it. There is a subconscious judgment that happens when people watch video. It stays subconscious if the material looks professional; but if it starts to dip below the perceived qualitative standard, people become conscious of its shortcomings and will either be distracted or, worse, subconsciously judge the content on the basis of its production quality.
It is irrelevant whether we think this is fair or not. It is true. And although long-standing Christians might be more forgiving, they are still bothered by it.† Young Christians and non-Christians will be turned off immediately. Focusing on inferior production details is not what you want your audience doing during a teaching session. In light of that, make sure that whatever video materials you use look and sound professional from start to finish. In many instances, the clothes make the man.
Second, video is more effective emotively than rationally. By video,í I am referring to anything that can be shown via a light-emitting display such as a TV, monitor, or video projector. Tests have been done ever since the 1960ís on children and adults concerning the effectiveness of learning by watching video, and they pretty consistently reveal that video is an inferior medium for communicating propositional truth. We could talk about how constant video images encourage greater alpha-wave responses in the brains of viewers (alpha waves are what we give off when weíre asleep or in a coma); or we could talk about how the combination of moving images and sounds results in a medium that communicates more through vicarious experiences than transferred ideas; but what is obvious to even the most casual observer is that more people have a tendency to get bored by a talking-head speaker than by a dramatic (or narrative) video. (Documentaries fall somewhere in between depending on how they are structured.)
The reasons for this are manifold. For one thing, the spoken word must be processed, decoded, and then intellectually apprehended whether spoken by a real person or an image. This takes time and effort. But video adds the additional complication in that its power as a medium encourages the brain to work in a non-rational way, more easily gathering emotional cues from the images and sounds than rational ideas. Hence, a dramatic piece has the immediacy of† comprehension due more to its images and sounds than to what is being said. Someone talking on a video is at an immediate disadvantage. The difference between hearing a movie script read and watching the actual movie is the difference between a shadow and the object casting it.
The average person can verify this from experience: people who can watch a 2 to 3 hour movie without moving a muscle will quickly grow fatigued and even bored after 30 minutes of sustained video teaching. As a medium, dramatic video is a master at manipulating our emotional complex.† Yet we immensely enjoy these emotional manipulations: fear, surprise, exhilaration, desire, humor – these are all emotions that we watch videos with the direct intent of experiencing.
What does this mean for the small group leader? First, use video teaching sparingly since it is not a great medium for sustained intellectual comprehension. Be sensitive to length. Anything longer than 30 minutes of talking head teaching may cause you to lose a good part of your group.
Second, make sure that as a teacher you spend time teaching and engaging your group in a traditional way. There is no video replacement for old-fashioned leader-group teaching. Jesus, who could have lived in any age and taught in any way, chose to teach verbally in small groups. This should be a cue to our own methods.
Third, dramatic videos can create an emotional experience with your group, but those emotions need to be supported and informed by solid, Biblical teaching. Left on their own, they can become a series of experiences that lack the rational footholds required for basic Christian living and spiritual growth. The emotive power of smart dramatic video cannot be overestimated, but it must be tempered with expositional teaching.
Fourth, don’t be fooled into thinking that video is a replacement for you. Video is simply one tool among many that you can use in a small group. But every carpenter knows that a hammer is good for nailing a nail and useless for cutting a board. You need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of video, not only from a content-qualitative perspective but also the peculiar ways it influences and communicates as a medium.
In closing, I recommend you go with your gut in using video for small groups. When you find new material, ignore who is behind it and go watch a sample for yourself from beginning to end. Think about your own reactions: are you engaged, do you drift at times, can you really remember what was being communicated or was it just entertaining?† Is there time to engage the group in a leader-group atmosphere?
Finally, there is a growing corpus of solid dramatic video material linked to good expositional teaching. Seek out video materials that are centered on the Bible and drive your group deeper into Scripture. After all, the goal of any group study tool is to make your life a little easier and your job a little more effective in building disciples for the Kingdom.
