Hollywood Doesn’t Want You to Notice This: Media, Church, and Attention
Cameron (00:00)
Hello and welcome to Thinking Out Loud. I'm your co-host, Cameron McAllister.
Nathan (00:04)
And I'm your co-host Nathan Rittenhouse.
In this episode, we listened to Cameron lament the changes in the entertainment industry, film and attention spans declining. it's just Cameron has, has no time for it. then surprise of all surprises, we shift that into the church and think about what makes a good sermon. What is different in the way in which we sit and listen and what our attention spans look like and how Christian communication is different from the way that our minds are trained to receive information the rest of the week. If you're a person who
Thanks. Yeah, it seems like something is a little different in the world around me when it comes to the quality of film and also just my own attention span. This might touch some things that you'll find helpful. As always, if you appreciate what we do, you can like it, you can share it, you can subscribe to our content. And if you want to support the work we can, we do, you can do so by visiting www.toltogether.com.
Cameron (00:07)
Did you know that shows are now made or written, I should say, with the assumption that you've got a phone in your hand? Shocker. Can't believe show runners would think that we would ever do such a thing, but it seems that they do think that. And so as a result, shows are doing everything that they will teach you not to do. If you do a fine arts degree or if you're in any kind of a writing course, any kind of creative writing course, they'll tell you things like,
Don't do clunky exposition. Don't spoon feed the reader or the viewer. And don't try to just bend over backwards to you have to show, not tell. But that's not the case now. And I've noticed that Nathan, a number, and we're talking not about cheap Hallmark movies, sorry, Hallmark movie fans, but we're talking, sorry, yes, there we go. The Danielle Steele. ⁓
Nathan (00:56)
It's just yeah, that's the typical punching bag
Cameron (01:03)
novels of TV shows, suppose. Sorry, Daniels. All right, we're done. But these are prestige dramas. Many of them, I'm not going to name them, you know, that are have big budgets, have a list actors, and we'll have
Nathan (01:16)
Well, let's go with the headline.
It just came out that in the last quarter, there were 25 Hollywood films with massive budgets, all with A-list actors, all which were total duds at the box office. So Hollywood just went 0 for 25.
Cameron (01:30)
Sorry, Sidney Sweeney. Four in a row.
Yes. mean, so there's a larger conversation about what's happening with movie viewing habits and theater going in the first place. But here, I'm just talking about films that are really, that have high budgets, well-produced, know, amazing people behind the scenes and behind the lens. And you're getting absolutely terrible dialogue. You'll have, I'm just going to make this up, you know, pull this out of a hat here, but you will have snippets that go like this.
Well, if it isn't my mordant cynical boyfriend here, fresh off a flight from Hong Kong. Well, if it isn't my resentful and vindictive ex-girlfriend, now a frigid office worker, you'd think I'm kidding, but I'm not. It sounds like, you know what it reminds me of a little bit, Nathan, the, toward the end of the nineties and the early two thousands, the early aughts when I moved to the States.
There were a whole bunch of shows on the WB Dawson's Creek was one of them, Seventh Heaven. And Kevin Williamson was one of the writers behind these shows. was also, Kevin Williamson is most famous for having written the movie Scream directed by Wes Craven. Scream came out in 1996 and it kind of rejuvenated for better or for worse the horror genre in in the 1990s. But anyway, he, he had a way of writing dialogue that was just that kind of snappy.
But it was for it was for kids soap operas. That's what all dialogue. Well, a lot of dialogue sounds like now. And that's what it reminds me of.
Nathan (03:08)
Well,
actually what it reminded me of when you were doing your made-up version of that is a long time ago there used to be like made-for-radio stories. And so, like you would listen to a story on the radio and they had to describe every single part of it for you because there, I mean, you couldn't, it was radio, you can't see it. So it was assumed that you were listening, I mean, you were listening to it. And the way that you were speaking in a movie dialogue assumes that you're not looking at it, you're just listening to it.
Cameron (03:39)
So my favorite decade of filmmaking is probably the sixties and seventies. And one thing that strikes me when I watch films from that, from these, you know, that were made during these decades is that they're made, they're grownup films. And I don't mean that they necessarily have lots of mature content. I mean that people speak as adults to adults and these films are subtle. They do not telegraph for you what's happening.
They do not telegraph plot points. They're subtle. also, they rely on gestures and nuances between characters. The characters are psychologically complex and they are absolutely not going to tell you everything you should be thinking. Also, music can be used and all of these, but it's not used to lead you to any conclusions. Nowadays,
close-ups, the editing, all of it is meant to do all of your thinking for you, just to seduce you into drawing all of the conclusions that the filmmakers want you to draw. Whereas in the past, this wasn't the case. You're more of an active participant.
Nathan (04:45)
So is
this really just about attention spans? So when you're saying the 60s and 70s produced movies with an that were they assumed an attention span and an attention to detail and yeah, a direction of the focus of making the viewer watch and discern and decipher is I mean, is it simply just that or is there something else at play here?
Cameron (05:13)
Well, I mean, also it's worth pointing out that the 60s and 70s were when the envelope really got pushed as well. And you had films that were pushing the boundaries. So they do also pave the way for where we are at today. You had films like Midnight Cowboy, which was at the time rated X going after some very, very, themes that had just never been dealt with on screen before. You had a film like Taxi Driver, to my mind, one of the greatest, the finest films made, which was
highly controversial because it was also very violent. So I don't want to downplay that they weren't going in sensationalistic directions. But there was an assumption that audiences could be thoughtful. It was assumed that, I mean, also this is a world in which smartphones don't exist. And this is also a world in which people routinely went to the theater and a film wasn't instantly available.
digitally. I don't know. mean, it wasn't that long ago, Nathan, even when I was growing up in Europe, probably because I was across the pond, films would come into the theater and then it would be a good year or more before you could ever see it. It would just go into the limbo of films before it arrived. And in the 60s and 70s, who knew? I mean, the only way, your only chance to see the film was in a theater. So all of that was assumed. You had to go physically to a place to see this movie.
You had no smartphone in your hand. You were absorbed. And ironically, we're talking about attention spans of audience and thoughtfulness. When films came, during these eras, films were considered a very low level of entertainment. was debatable whether they were even art, and they were certainly seen as very profane. Yeah. Yes, absolutely.
Nathan (06:59)
Well, back up even farther to your... mean, silent film was the origin part here, right? I mean, so you think you're Charlie Chaplin's and all of
that all the way back where obviously you had to be looking at it. And I think also, though, on the... If you read into the decline of the theater experience, most of the people would say, I just can't put up with the behavior of the other people in the theater because they're talking to each other. They're on their phones. They're on their... ⁓ It doesn't have... It's all distracted.
Cameron (07:26)
It's, it's a catch 22 because,
well, here's the thing about that. On the one hand, yeah, people act like the movie theater is their own personal living room. But in an effort to get people into theaters, a lot of theaters are transforming themselves into glorified living rooms where you can have food, you can sit in a recliner and you can get a glass of beer or whatever else you want. And so people act like it's their living room.
Nathan (07:54)
Okay, let me take all the fun out of this. Let's talk about sermons. Let's talk about church. Let's talk about other ⁓ auditory large group ingesting material together. So let's think back to a point in time in which the New York Times on Monday morning would print what they thought was the best sermon from New York City's preachers on the front page of the New York Times. And I am assuming they did that because people
Cameron (07:56)
All right, but I digress. Yeah.
Are you saying this is different now? Just kidding. Yeah.
Nathan (08:24)
Yeah,
few times. Maybe different. What's different now is the...
Who would sit down and read a sermon in a newspaper? I mean, that's a category that's so hard to think about.
Cameron (08:35)
Well, I was gonna ask you, Nathan.
Can you, and this is a genuine question, can you think of the last sermon from a major public minister that was sort of widespread that people really, that people gathered around or that people were really.
Nathan (08:52)
⁓ You know,
only ones you get are like ⁓ inaugural. So things that are tangential to politics. you know, inauguration ceremonies of present or something like that. And those are usually not seem to be theological, heavyweight Christian disciple forming as much as they're short. It's political commentary and theater. A little bit there too. So other than that, ⁓ I mean, you can go back actually right here on my desk, ⁓ Martin Lloyd Jones.
Cameron (09:01)
Right.
And they're short,
Nathan (09:20)
studies on the Sermon on the Mount. It's just a printed book of all of his sermons on that. know, Spurgeon sermons all written and you can go listen to them. So they were, and I mean, also think about the crazy, like somebody was, I guess, doing shorthand. There were recordings of some of these, but you know, a lot of that somebody was there taking notes of. ⁓ So anyway, so we, so I guess what I'm trying to do is track a progression just in the way that we can, because
Cameron (09:23)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
All right, let me hone in on what you were gonna.
Nathan (09:50)
At some point, think, and let me throw the end goal here and then you back up and work us there, is that there are churches that I think are working toward making the sanctuary your living room in the sense of the comfy seating, the food and drink you want and watch the entertainment. so, yeah, anyway, we'll get there.
Cameron (10:12)
Well, was recently, okay, this, I think this illustrates your point. I was recently at a gathering and it was a sort of small gathering with a presenter. It was a scholar giving, you know, so giving a talk and in front of me was a person with an iPad in their hands and never for one minute of this presentation was this person not actively swirling around with their finger searching.
Finding any book that was referenced this this book was being looked up and yes, I was seated behind this person So yes, I was watching and yes, I was judging. I'm sorry, but yeah opening Yeah opening different articles
Nathan (10:46)
⁓ But was this person 12
years old?
Cameron (10:51)
This person was in their seventies. Yeah. Yes. That was a, it's a very apt, that was a very Nathan question. Yes. So this person was older. So yeah, flip, mean, clicking hyperlinks to then different articles, then Wikipedia pages being accessed on and on the whole time the presenter is, is going. Obviously this is just one small little window into what goes on in any presentation these days. And we've all sat in church. We've all seen this. Yeah.
Nathan (10:57)
Yeah.
Well, I only made that point to say, because the
tendency is to be like, well, kids these days, and I only poked at that going by to say, this is not, we're not talking about kids these days, we're talking about, we're all in this together.
Cameron (11:25)
yeah, I know.
Us. Yes, we're all in this together. So I'm so the tendency here. So let's make a, let me make a few observations. Is this the kind, so this is one example of a dumbing down and it really is because you're doing, you're assuming that the audience is not going, is not willing to think you're assuming the audience is multitasking. You're assuming that you're getting a divided attention. so catering to that.
And I know certain, I'm circumventing big questions about entertainment versus art and all of that. We're in an era now, the other thing about the 60s and the 70s was you really could have films that were made not purely for commercial interests. You had, because the system of financing was different at that time. Movies were not viewed purely in terms of their profitability. So you did have genuinely experimental
Nathan (12:19)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (12:31)
and thoughtful films that were made to be basically just as a standalone piece of art rather than, will this rake in box office returns? Is that sort of thing still happening? It is, sure, but it's harder to do it and you have to find, I mean, there are always creative ways to get around systems and all of that and people always, filmmakers find different ways, but it gets, there are certain areas where it's more difficult. And right now it's more difficult because people look at movies and they just,
They want to spell them out in terms of profit. Think about, you mentioned all the flops that have come out recently. An interesting example to point to is Sidney Sweeney, who on the one hand is lauded as a very popular actress and she's very commercially viable. And yet four films in a row, all of which have performed disastrously, historically disastrously, some of the worst performances ever at the box office.
And one of those was sort of an art house flick where she plays a boxer. gained, she gained some weight for the role, got kind of bulky. So in other words, she doesn't look as conventionally attractive as she normally does in her films. And it didn't, it didn't do very well. So that's just to give a snippet of some of the, the changing dynamics right now in the, in the Hollywood system, at least.
Nathan (13:53)
Yeah, so I guess we're talking Hollywood, but we're also talking our general ability to focus on things and to understand a big point that's being communicated and being made. And there's the slippery slope of, I was even talking to elementary teachers who were saying, know, 10 years ago, maybe a little longer than that, most of the teaching was done paper and pencil with a book.
and you let them watch a video clip of something if you really wanted to get their attention. And somebody was saying to me just a year or two ago, even now, a three minute video of, you know, eagles swooping in and catching fish, nobody's paying attention. It just like anything on a screen. What was intended and probably was at some point a really cool way to learn about something is just now totally in a category that straight over everybody's heads. And so the
the what it takes. know this Cameron, how many times have you been invited to speak someplace and they're like, Oh, could you, could you make it like a Ted talk, 12, 15 minutes? Um, I spoke someplace. I spoke at a church in London where it was so scripted. had eight minutes. The sermon was to go from 10 52 to 11. then like an eight minute here, like, what are we doing here? Um, so, so I'm saying there's this, there's this part of me, uh,
Cameron (14:58)
I was just gonna say, yeah. Yeah.
Eight minutes.
Nathan (15:21)
Surprise, surprise, that is like, hang on a second. There needs to be a space where we can develop an idea for more than eight minutes and, ⁓ that'd be seen as a good thing, not as a total bore.
Cameron (15:32)
absolutely.
Well, and you're also right to point out that this is a bigger problem and it's widespread. It's not, it's not, it's not limited to movies. That's a, that's one or TV shows one symptom of a greater underlying problem here. But I also, I've just got to bring in my own experience here as well. Nathan, not only have I experienced this in, from, people who want me to make my talk, make a talk shorter. I mean, it's one thing to make a talk shorter eight minutes though. Eight minutes is ridiculous, but.
It's one thing to make a talk shorter. It's another thing also to have, I'm sure you've had this request too. You got to make, make it really simple. Keep the cookies on the lower shelf. I came to absolutely loathe that phrase. It was used all the time. It still is with me and I've always resolutely ignored it. But also in the publishing world, Nathan, I've experienced this where I'll have a sentence and it's a very clear sentence and it's very concise.
Nathan (16:15)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (16:33)
But the problem is it's too clear. And they want me to add three to four to five additional sentences to unpack a very basic straightforward statement. And what that does is first of all, dumps it down and it makes for terrible writing, terrible, terrible writing. You'll notice that so many of the books that come out right now are, it's not necessarily the author's fault. It's an editor who's heckled them or it's a publisher that's heckled them and said, no, add another
Nathan (17:00)
⁓ yeah, you.
Cameron (17:03)
Yeah, illustrate being tired. Illustrate being tired. I don't have to illustrate
being tired for you. I remember sitting through a sermon once where the guy goes, you know how I was really tired. You know how certain days you get home from the office and you sit down on the couch and this it's like this fatigue settles on you. I thought, ⁓ my goodness, are you actually going to illustrate tired? We everybody understands what tired is. Why are you explaining this and wasting time with? mean, anyway, so.
That kind of thing is very real and it's everywhere. Yeah, yeah. But I'm not that worked up about it, so it's cool. Let it go. ⁓
Nathan (17:32)
and tell us how you really feel.
The, well,
you'll, you'll notice that. if you're listening along, like, are these guys talking about? ⁓ think about the last time that you read a book and you're like, yeah, that would have been a good article. Right. Like, cause.
Cameron (17:49)
Exactly. Well, chances are it was an article. And then somebody said, ha ha, I smell a publishing deal here because this went viral in the Atlantic. So let's blow this up into 200 pages.
Nathan (18:00)
Well, the, I mean, the classic part of this was I remember, you know, elementary, middle school, you had to write the thousand word essay on something. And, ⁓ my dad is a good writer and early on taught us the skill of fluffing a piece, you know, so it needs to be a thousand words. it was only, you know, you wrote it out and 700. Let's throw some, let's throw some adjectives and some broader description in here and we can puff this thing into, ⁓ you know, redundant phrases and repeated lines and boom.
Cameron (18:14)
yeah.
Nathan (18:30)
Extra 300 words right there. But if we're doing that, why would we then be surprised when people aren't paying attention? Because at the point where the guy goes through a two-minute monologue on describing what it means to be tired, even for somebody who's really focused, their impulse is going to be to check out ⁓ or check on something else. So I'm saying, are we, is a catch-22 here, right? If you say an important line and only 50 % of the people are listening,
Cameron (18:33)
Absolutely.
I did. I was done. Yeah. Hello, Cloud Cuckoo Land.
Nathan (19:00)
They're not going to be able to follow the rest of the content. If you spend three minutes on that same point so that everybody gets it, then the people who got it in the first sentence that you said, as a public communicator, it seems like a very difficult, I mean, what we're doing here isn't, we're just brainstorming. But when you're speaking with like a prepared, here's where I want to go. Here's the main set of ideas. Follow along.
Cameron (19:20)
It is? Okay. It's difficult. Well.
Mm-hmm.
It's difficult if you accept that, well, it's difficult if you think you have to cater to these tendencies. You can cheerfully refuse, you can cheerfully refuse, which I always have. now that doesn't necessarily, mean, but if, so it also depends on what your vision of success is. If you want to play the game, whatever the game is, and you,
Nathan (19:39)
Adio.
Cameron (19:56)
You're cherishing. There's now there's nothing wrong with wanting to reach lots of people, by the way. I just want to say that people could hear hear me sometimes and think, gosh, Cameron doesn't care about he's like one of those annoying kids in high school in the nineties who only cared about underground bands. Well, okay. Guilty. But, but have you heard of the band? Well, I don't like them anymore. But here's the thing.
Nathan (20:13)
He was.
Cameron (20:20)
There's nothing wrong with wanting to reach a lot of people. There's nothing wrong with being successful. There's nothing wrong with even necessarily going viral. There is something wrong with all of that though, if you're sacrificing the integrity of the work to cater to some of the worst tendencies of our culture. And you really don't have to do that. Now you may lose some people and you have to kind of say, be it. Because I don't want to, if there's an inherently flawed way of communicating,
that's become very, very popular. I don't want to say, hey, if you can't beat them, join them, which let's just face it, a lot of theologically conservative Christians, particularly evangelicals are very populist in their mindset, whether they acknowledge that or not. They think, no, we want to reach the largest number of people. We want to go lowest common denominator. This is just the way things are. So therefore we need to cater our message to them. I'm here to tell you, no, you don't. You do not necessarily have to do that. You can make a choice.
not to do that doesn't mean that you're aggressively boring and alienating to your audience. That's not what I'm saying at all. But it means that if there is a real commitment to speak to people thoughtfully and to not insult their intelligence, many of them, many of them, maybe this is, I don't think I'm a hopeless optimist. Nobody who listens to me would, I think would mistake me for a hopeless optimist, but people will rise to that challenge. And now more than ever,
People want to, there's widespread recognition by the way of how terrible and clunky these movies are and the dialogue is. mean, scrolling along on Instagram or on TikTok, you can find an influencer pointing out all of these massive, massive flaws. People see it. People know it. People know that they're not making movies like Raging Bull anymore. They get it. It's widespread and it's recognized. People are tired of Ted Talkers all the time, by the way. So, I've said enough to get me in trouble. Yeah.
Nathan (22:05)
Mm-hmm.
There's that. No, I
don't think so. think as long as we are admitting we're wallowing in this, but let me add another variable in this as it comes to because obviously as we're thinking about the underlying assumption here is we're saying the way in which we're training our attention spans for 167 hours a week is going to massively play into the way that we approach church on a Sunday morning. So it's going to be hard to shift gears here. so thinking about attention spans, your ability to how you
Cameron (22:41)
Hmm.
Nathan (22:46)
Think through content like if you can't focus for longer than three minutes on a YouTube video It's gonna be hard for you to pray, you know, like let's just Call some of those things out as they go along and say what are what are the skills that we that we don't want to lose? And we know that they're there. I mean, I'm thinking on Sunday morning like there's a there's a form that I don't know if it's a form game kind of outline like, you know, all the eight and nine year olds are taking notes on the sermon
Cameron (22:58)
Yep. Yep.
Nathan (23:15)
writing down the scripture passages, what are the main thoughts, what's an illustration that you appreciated or remembered, what's a big question that you have about this topic. When you look over and you see eight, nine year olds doing that, because these are given to them by their teacher before the sermon, because they're going to discuss them afterward, you're like, I'm pretty sure that if a nine year old can do that, all the rest of us can too. So it's not beyond our capability. There's just a sense in which, are we
Cameron (23:22)
Hmm.
Well, one...
Nathan (23:44)
dedicated enough
to training ourselves to being able to engage with some ideas.
Cameron (23:48)
One category comes to mind here, Nathan. Not everything is entertainment, but we think, we're conditioned to think it all is. Yes, that is, that's a very, and the fact that that's a real phrase is interesting. But so a sermon is not entertainment. Not all films are entertainment. And if you doubt that statement, I invite you to go watch a film like Pickpocket or Tokyo Story.
Nathan (23:54)
Correct. Edutainment.
Cameron (24:18)
or debt. there are in that are these are these flawed bad films? No, but they they are or Tarkovsky, anything by Tarkovsky basically nostalgia, nostalgia or stalker. Now these films, all the films I've mentioned, I would class as masterpieces or let's go more recent Terrence Malick's Tree of Life. A lot of people would acknowledge Terrence Malick's films or or a hidden life.
A hidden life is not made to be an entertaining film. It's made to be a trans... You don't feel good walking... It's made to be a transporting experience, which I would argue it is. And I would say on the film succeeds on its terms, it's a work of art. also, I was gonna say, I've got to find one, go through my mental index. There's one here that Nathan's seen, but...
Nathan (24:45)
Mm-hmm.
Now you don't feel good walking away from that one.
I was just happy for you to list a film that I've actually seen. So here we are 25 minutes in, just, whew.
Cameron (25:14)
There's nothing wrong with films as entertainment either. I like Tommy boy. Okay. I like Money Pit. Okay. That's it's fine, but it's just recognizing that not everything is in the entertainment category. Tommy boy is in the entertainment category. So it makes sense to treat it as entertainment. A hidden life is not. Yeah.
Nathan (25:25)
Well, what's
Let's make a distinction here.
between communication and amusement. ⁓ so to muse is to think, muse to not think. Like, there are forms of entertainment that we're using to not think. I mean, not that you, it's just, it's an escape from the, But it's not trying to communicate deep themes to you that are gonna transform your life. ⁓ So let's,
Cameron (25:47)
Yes. And it's fine. For a time. it's... Yep, drudgery. It's fine.
But if everything
is seen in those terms, we got a problem.
Nathan (26:01)
If everything becomes that, yeah,
there's the issue.
Cameron (26:05)
And so if you have a sermon that is modeled after a sitcom, basically, is in sort of kind of reflects that basic dynamic of routine laughs or made for YouTube. Yeah, we've got.
Nathan (26:16)
Or they're made for YouTube. They're made for YouTube sermons. You're like, the audience is not the
congregation on this sermon, is it? It's the online following, isn't it?
Cameron (26:24)
Yeah. Well, Nathan, you
and I were in ministry settings where we were coached to speak for everyone. I know you're speaking to this local gathering here in Boston, but it's going to be recorded in live stream. So you need to, you need to speak for everyone. And we, of course we're all, yeah, I was going to say there are always, there are always a few in the crowd who are just disagreeable. And you and I were kind of, yeah, nah, no. We're going to use personal names here. We're going to reference conversations we had earlier, because we can't talk to anybody but the people in front of us. Yeah.
Nathan (26:38)
Meh.
Point to things in the room.
Cameron (26:54)
Point to things in the room, how dare you. Yes, so that.
Nathan (26:56)
So let's
add another layer on this. So not everything is ⁓ entertainment. Not everything is educational. Not everything is... ⁓ But there's another layer here that I've told the story before to kind of speak into that where we tend to shift into our church experience and bring the rest of it. ⁓ It's been a couple of years back when grandpa got up to preach a sermon and ⁓ his first words were,
Cameron (27:03)
entertainment or amusement.
Nathan (27:25)
Just to be clear, I am not here this morning to impress you.
And then read the scripture and onward you go. Yeah, right. Yeah, well, it's, it's a sense of like, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not a dancing monkey. Like I've come to communicate something that I think is eternally true and profound and will change your lives and has massive consequences, whether or not you get this right. That's so that's a, ⁓ different kind of thing, but also Cameron, here's another, here's the other layer that we don't talk about as much as we should is what the phrase.
Cameron (27:33)
You have my attention. ⁓
Nathan (28:00)
people used to use is anointed or anointing. You don't have ⁓ an anointed film, usually, ⁓ but there are sermons where you're like, there is something else going on in this communication that the hearts between the listener and the person speaking are resonating with the Spirit of God in a way that very simple statements are penetrating very deeply in life-transformative ways. ⁓
Cameron (28:05)
Mmm, yeah.
Nathan (28:30)
into people. And so the church experience is different because it is a sacred space in which we're in step with and harmonizing with the Spirit of the Triune God over the spoken word, experiencing the love of the Father, and responding to beauty in deep ways that there's a... like when that kicks in and is working and is at play and we're attuned to it,
That's an entirely different experience for the preacher and for the... You've done it, I'm sure. Where you can be like, thank you Lord for using me in that. And then other times you walk away and like, I was trying way too hard out of my own power and it was dry and dusty. And maybe it was true and maybe people giggled, but it did not... The punch didn't land. It didn't sink in. The marinade didn't get down into the fibers of the meal there. ⁓
Cameron (29:21)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (29:27)
And so, well, yeah, I don't know. Let's make sure that we're expecting that as a category of something that distinguishes our theater experience from our Sunday morning ⁓ break and open the word together.
Cameron (29:27)
God didn't send fire down on the altar.
It's an important point and it's because you know what it does, Nathan, though you're describing an anointed message where the Holy Spirit is made manifest in that moment between whoever happens to be the messenger and the congregation. You know what is one very salient factor to point to here is that this is in the hands of God. It's not engineered. It's not manipulated.
Nathan (30:14)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (30:17)
And if you point to entertainment, you have so many powers of manipulation at your disposal. In films, so a film, you can have a film that can be quite spiritually contemplative, but it has to work against, but not in this, it has to work against all of the dynamics of the medium.
Nathan (30:36)
There are some breakthroughs.
⁓ The Passion of the Christ was a pretty heavy in-theater experience. I remember going as youth group, like there was some weight to that. A lot of people crying. ⁓ It came through differently. ⁓
Cameron (30:46)
Yeah, there was some real gravity. Yes. yes. I remember
people bringing in popcorn and cokes and then being devastated because I saw it in theater as well. we're talking about, but again, well, kind of Nathan, but I mean, what you're talking about in a Sunday sermon is, it's a difference in kind, not degree. Because
Nathan (31:00)
That's an exception.
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (31:14)
For all of its power, Mel Gibson's film still uses the machinery of cinema in very, very, very strong ways. It's certainly one of the most violent films ever made. And it has some of the most striking imagery. But when we're talking about what you just mentioned,
This is a work of the Lord and we can't engineer it. We can't plan it. This is why we always laugh at, hey, we've got a revival next Friday, 5.30 at this show up and just see it happen. But I think so much of what we're describing, the dynamic is it's in our hands. We control it. We will make this happen. We will use amusement.
Nathan (31:44)
You
Cameron (32:01)
to gain from our audience the emotional response that we want or whatever. We're gonna use rhetoric to get what we want. when somebody is genuinely being a minister of the word, they will not be trying to coax, they will not be trying to manipulate, they will not be trying to cook up fake passion, they will not be trying to ⁓ engage in any of these tricks. That doesn't mean that they won't tell a joke occasionally, doesn't mean that there won't be some levity, but it means that
They're not trying to do God's job for him. And that's a very important point to make. boy. And if you're a speaker, I mean, we've been there, we've done that. It's not a good feeling. But when you've let go.
Nathan (32:34)
Yeah. If you're trying to generate conviction, have, you're out of bounds.
I get to preach more than you do. And there are certainly times in which you are 40 minutes into a sermon and everybody is sitting with their eyes glued forward, leaning forward in the pew.
Cameron (32:50)
It's an incredible experience.
No, for sure you do. Yes.
Nathan (33:09)
That is a...
recognition that the truths of Scripture and and people be like man that was a 40-minute sermon it felt like it was there's a sense in which your time slips when you really actually engage with me I maybe the the weird analogy is like when you're dating and you go for a walk you know with your to-be-fiance and you're like wow we walked and talked for an hour and it felt like four minutes there's there is a way in which we begin to engage with deep truths
that the timing element of it really isn't a factor. ⁓ Or a long meal together, or a... In fact, I would almost say that the most meaningful things in life...
Cameron (33:46)
Yes. Yes.
Nathan (33:58)
are the things that don't have timestamps on them. And that's...
Cameron (34:04)
You know what, can I just bring in something? This is not necessarily relevant to anybody and I don't know if it will be helpful, but it's a change of mind I've had about this kind of thing. I remember years ago, somebody who we worked for who fell from grace, Ravi Zacharias telling me he would get off stage and if it had been a really powerful one where there was really, you he felt.
It was just an amazing experience. would feel completely deflated afterwards, all the strength, very, very tired. And so for a long time, I thought that must be it. I would get on stage and I would give what I believed to be an electrifying performance. Performance, I'm using that word advisedly here, not a good word, but it's the word. And I would come off and I'd feel utterly depleted.
Years later as I grew as a speaker and a minister and I gave occasional sermons as well, when I gave one that I came to recognize was anointed in the sense that the Holy Spirit took hold in a way I hadn't anticipated. When I walked off the podium or the stage, I did not feel depleted. I felt energized. I felt as though I hadn't been doing that much.
Nathan (35:22)
Gratitude.
Cameron (35:24)
and just gratitude. And I didn't feel tired. I felt tired the times before because that was me performing hard. And in those cases, it's not that I hadn't prepared, but I wasn't trying at all. I was just being a messenger.
Nathan (35:38)
It's the difference between pulling your sled uphill
and riding your sled down the hill.
Cameron (35:43)
There go. Well said. So this has been quite the meandering journey,
Nathan (35:51)
If you made it to this point of the conversation,
you didn't need to listen to it because your attention span is phenomenal. Congratulations.
Cameron (35:56)
But
there you go. I think we will, I mean, it's important to acknowledge these dynamics. Sometimes I think, Nathan, we're trying to just point to things that are happening and some of the scenery and just say, look, you're not crazy. This is happening. You are experiencing this. And there are other ways of being. And I think that's sufficient. So thanks for hanging in there.
Nathan (36:20)
Yeah, all right.
Cameron (36:24)
You've been listening to Thinking Out Loud, podcast where we think out loud about current events, entertainment, and diversions, and who knows what else, and Christian hope.