Catalyst 09 :: Shane Hipps

Shane Hipps is the Lead Pastor of Trinity Mennonite Church. Before this, Shane had a career in advertising as a strategic partner where he worked on the multi-million dollar communications plan for Porsche Cars North America. Here he gained expertise in understanding media and culture. Shane is a dynamic communicator and sought-after speaker on issues of faith, culture, technology and spirituality. He is the author of Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith and The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media Shapes Faith, the Gospel, and Church. Shane lives with his family in Phoenix.

• Christianity is fundamentally a communication event.
• It’s a story of God revealing Himself to the world using different forms of media: poets, prophets, donkeys, stone tablets, etc.
• God is in the business of communication.
• How we understand communication impacts the way we communicate the Gospel.
• We have an assumption that the methods change and the message stays the same.
• We believe you have to innovate your methods otherwise the Gospel becomes increasingly irrelevant.
• We believe our methods and our media are neutral – i.e. porn through the TV is bad, Christian TV is good.
• The opposite is actually true.
• The medium is the message.
• How you say something matters as much or more than what you say.
• What you use to communicate with will determine how your message is receive and understood.
• The flickering pixels we look at reshape pathways in our brain that change the way we see and perceive the world.
• There’s a difference between printed words… processed primarly in the left side of the brian – sequential, logical, etc.
• Images is right sided – it’s an experience.
• Images invite argument.
• The moment you use images and not words, it pins the logical side to the back of the brain and creates images.
• If you want to sell something, images are the way to go.
• Images and words are not interchangeable.
• They are fundamentally different modes of doing things
• About every 7 minutes you see an ad.
• Movies are made to be seen.
• How you say something will shape how it’s understood.
• This puts us in a ministry pickle.
• Here you have a need: a need to innovate the method.
• Where does that leave us?
• When you evolve your methods you change the message.
• Jesus made the exact same observation.
• Mark 2:22 – new wine into new wineskins
• The container and the content need to match.
• The wine itself is new.
• We knew the wineskins were new, but sometimes we forget the wine was, too.
• You must update your methods and your message.
• The message actually changes.
• It has changed.
• The Gospel message has changed based on where culture was and who the people of God were and what they were wrestling with.
• There’s different messages.
• The message never changes.
• The ever-changing Gospel never changes.
• You are the still the same person you were when you were a child, but you’ve changed. You’re still you, you’re just different.
• The look, function and feel of a mustard seed is different that a mustard tree. They are the same but always changing.
• What if what Jesus said is true? That the Gospel is living thing, not a lifeless artifact.
• God needs more gardeners and less guards.
• A guard is motivated by fear. They’re afraid something will be broken, stolen, or messaged up.
• A gardner is motivated by love. They are filled with anticipation.
• Gardeners protect but never to the point of stunting growth.
• The Gospel has no room for fear.
• You don’t have to be afraid … all you have to do is love.
• Perfect love casts out all fear.
• In our best efforts to preserve and defend the Gospel we’ve become guards and not gardeners.
• We need to become open to
• There’s certain things that NEVER change: Love wins, grace is free, peace is possible, etc.
• How it’s changed is in how it’s expressed, felt, and seen is changed because of how we change.
• There are diamonds in the rock of Scripture that we have yet to discover.
• The Gospel grows.
• Each leaf that grows on the tree depends on branch behind it, and the branch behind that.
• We need to be become gardeners of the Gospel that grows; not fearful guards.

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