The microphone problem. . .

A while ago I read what I had thought was an odd opinion piece by a guy arguing that microphones have
killed preaching.  Seemed odd at the time.  Was it?  According to the guy,  if a preacher spoke without a microphone, he couldn’t simply mutter pious platitudes or speak in dull monotone without emotion or conviction.  At least if he did, no one would be able to hear him.  So, most likely, he would not simply babble on with words he had not prepared saying things without intention or passion.  At least that is what this author said. The preacher would have to know what he wanted to say and how to say it -- without benefit of a microphone to amplify his speech.  Without a microphone, the preacher would have to speak loudly and clearly in order to be heard.  Without a microphone doing the bulk of the work of projection, the preacher might actually have to exert himself in the pulpit.  Was he on to something or was this complainer simply searching for reasons in the all the wrong places?

The carbon microphone was first invented in the 1870s.  The whole idea of a sound system (microphone + amplifier + loudspeaker) took longer -- sometime in the mid-1910s.  Except for a very few, these contraptions were rarely installed in churches until the 1930s.  Now you cannot go without them.  I was once in a very small parish with a very small building but they still had microphones.  People have to hear.  Except they did hear long before microphones became standard equipment in churches.  People heard preachers great and not so great.  They heard them preach and not simply speak into microphones.  Sure, they did have sounding boards and raised pulpits and pulpits located nearer the people to help them but the preaching was up to the preacher -- without benefit of sound amplification.

Have they helped preaching?  We can certainly hear better but the question of whether microphones have helped preaching is a very different question.  To tell you the truth, I had not thought about this at all.  I always hated microphones and still do -- especially those that hang on the ear and extend around the cheek toward the mouth.  But you cannot get away from them.  They are literally everywhere in churches.  We have them for a variety of reasons -- many of them also not ancient but modern.  We have to have microphones because we record these services and broadcast them and we need to have something to broadcast and record.  We have them because we presume that it is too much for the preacher to preach without them and so we have microphones to amplify the voice of the speaker to replace the need for him to learn how to preach, how to project his voice, and how to provide a room in which preaching does not need amplification.  But have they helped preaching and not just the hearing of the sermon?

The complainer I referenced was not the first to raise this question.  “Many people will lament the disappearance of the Latin Mass from the Catholic Church without realizing that it was a victim of the microphone on the altar.” [Marshall McLuhan 1911–1980).  He was Roman Catholic.  The guy who said the medium is the message.  He later said: “Latin wasn’t the victim of Vatican II; it was done in by introducing the microphone. A lot of people, the Church hierarchy included, have been lamenting the disappearance of Latin without understanding that it was the result of introducing a piece of technology that they accepted so enthusiastically.”   McLuhan, the Canadian communications theorist and educator, was a critic of the potent influence of television, computers, and other electronic means of disseminating  information over the information being disseminated.  I don't know about his comments regarding the Latin Mass and the Vatican II Mass but I would apply his words to preaching.  PA systems have not exactly helped preaching even though they have helped mediocre preachers to be heard.  I am not opposed to the preacher being heard.  What I am worried about is the lack of preparation and conviction that seems to be a description of preaching problems today and, I would emphasize, the confusion of talking with preaching or imparting information with preaching.  Preaching is not the same as talking and not simply imparting information.  Preaching is the application of the Word to the situation of the hearer.  The words of the sermon surely do inform but they proclaim, convict, absolve, and direct the hearer.  I fear the the sound amplification systems across the churches have given preachers an opportunity to be lazy -- if not by what they say then by how they say it.  So much for my rant today.

[Marshall McLuhan, Liturgy and the Microphone. First published in: “The Critic” 1974, vol. 33, no. 1, October-December, pp. 12–17; reprinted in: Eric McLuhan and Jacek Szklarek (eds.), The medium and the light: Reflections on Religion, Toronto: Stoddart 1999, pp. 107-116, quote from p. 112.] 

 

Odd humor that hides a probem. . .

On May 16, 2026, SNL included a joke which, even by the standards of shocking Michael Jackson jokes,  was too far.  “Michael Jackson did nothing wrong,” Michael Che, one of the co-anchors of Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update,” said during the episode. “He was right to molest all those kids.” This was delivered with palpable surprise at the words coming out of his mouth, but Che kept going: “They were lucky. I would have paid him to do it. And I did! That’s right, when I was 10 years old, Michael Jackson molested me, and the only thing it gave me was a fetish for middle-aged white women.” He then smiled and said, almost as an aside, “That is not why I have that.” 

I did not see it.  I do not watch SNL -- for various reasons.  But reading about this joke revealed a great deal about us.  We seem adept at laughing at the things that should not be funny.  It is not just nervous humor.  I can understand that.  But this is laughter that, by making things funny that should be shocking, makes it easy for us to ignore real problems.  It is not about Michael Jackson.  It is not about child abuse or pedophilia.  It is about how corrupting this kind of humor is for our values, for the things that should be sacred but end up being crude and ugly.  Our use of humor to cover how wrong some things are is a sign of the way we have screwed up these things -- whether by tolerating or ignoring these wrongs or by making a joke out of the things that should be serious.

We laugh at things that should shock us and we are shocked at things which do not qualify as moral issues.  This is what sin has done when we take from the shadows and darkness the things that belong there and bring them into the daylight.  When we try to make normal what out to disordered and unacceptable, we turn upside down right and wrong, who we are and what we are here to be and do.  Then we pass this onto our children and they do not realize the background behind such things and simply accept them as normal, even laudable.

I have no idea what Michael Jackson did or did not do but I am shocked at the thought of abuse he might have suffered as some suggest and the abuse he might have done to others.  I do not understand how we can make humor about murdering babies or making pleasure the most important principle of life.  I do not understand how we can normalize what is perverted and make perverse what ought to be normal.  But I do not know that using humor to cover such things helps nothing and no one.   We have made vulgar speech normal until language seems to shock no one anymore.  

The "Catholic Moment" of the 1980s

In 1987, then Lutheran Richard John Neuhaus suggested that history had entered into a particular moment, a “Catholic moment,” in which the Roman Catholic Church was poised to lead a renewal of the faith and to exercise its “rightful role” in setting forth a “religiously informed public philosophy” for the United States.  Then he left Lutheranism and became the Roman Catholic he said he always was.  This visionary individual has passed away but what has become of his judgment that the US was entering into that Catholic moment?

Of course, that was before Francis, indeed before Benedict.  It was on the heels of a heady moment in which many outside of Rome were looking with Rome to the theological leadership and moral authority of Pope John Paul II.  Things have changed.  Especially after Francis.  The Roman Catholic Church is bleeding just like any other Christian denomination.  As one pundit put it:

In 2000, 2.6 million American children attended Catholic schools. In 2025, only 1.6 million did. In 2001, more than a quarter-million Catholic weddings took place; in 2024, around 107,000 did. In 2001, more than a million infants were baptized in the Church. In 2024, fewer than half a million were. These numbers presage a future in which the Catholic Church will be much smaller and poorer than it currently is. 

If this is what a Catholic moment looks like internally, the vision of Neuhaus is tanking, rotting from the inside out.  And this is after the extent of the priest sex scandals had done their worst.  So much for ascendancy.  Well, to be sure, there are some healthy signs in Rome.  The surge in adult conversions, many in urban and university churches, that so many are talking about has not yet found its way into the ordinary statistics of mass attendance and baptisms and the like.  If anything, the conversions may be due to the decline of other churches as much as it is to the ascendancy of Rome.  Another commentator has said exactly this -- contrasting the decline in Biblical literacy and the depth of knowledge that once characterized some conservative Christian denominations with the highly visible signs within Rome that they are still there (a new pope does not hurt).

While I wish that my own Lutheran Church Missouri Synod were enjoying the fruits of this rise of adult confirmands, we are, to some extent, seeing the same thing.  Again, I am not sure that it is due to us doing things right as much as the others doing things wrong.  The news is filled with sob stories of Protestantism, even confessional Protestantism that once bucked the intellectual and moral decline of the liberal and progressive versions.  Anglicans are a hot mess.  Conservatives in most Christian churches are conservative by degree and not necessarily anywhere close to actual conservatives.  It would seem that people are not so much looking for Rome as they are looking for authority, for continuity with the past instead of a break with it, for the basics of traditional worship, catechesis, and morality.  Tragically, these are found less and less across the many churches that claim to be Christian (and even among those who claim to be Lutheran!).  It would seem that if a few churches are winning anything, it is because they are the only ones left who in any way, shape, or form mirror the faith once delivered to the saints.

Rather than my kind of Lutherans lamenting what is happening in Rome (the good news) or being jealous of it, we need to learn from it.  Doctrinal and moral clarity and Biblical fidelity are the means by which the faith is delivered to those who do not know God.  Far from being the impediments that some claim are keeping folks away, these are the magnets that are drawing Christians from liberal and progressive churches and from the edges of the faith to find out more.  I do not know whether they ever was or ever will be a "Catholic moment" for Rome.  I can say with a great deal of confidence that there will be a catholic moment for those who hear the voice of God's Word and preach it, who hold to the doctrine of the Scriptures without embarrassment, and who confess it and live it out on Sunday morning.  That catholic moment never waned no matter what the statistics might say.  Of course, Neuhaus was smart enough to leave a caveat, suggesting that he did not know if such a moment might ever be realized.  I will go out on a limb and say that the catholic moment I am talking about will be.

Our digital pacifier. . .

A pacifier is a rubber, plastic, or silicone nipple substitute given to infants and toddlers to suckle on between feedings, helping to soothe them by satisfying their natural sucking reflex.   So Wiki says.  According to the same, using a pacifier can provide several advantages for both babies and parents:

Comfort and Soothing

• Satisfies sucking reflex: Babies have a strong natural desire to suck, which can be calmed with a pacifier.
• Helps with sleep: Pacifiers can assist babies in falling asleep faster and may help them stay asleep longer.

Every parent knows the value of a good pacifier.  At the same time, every parent knows when the pacifier has to go.  While pacifiers can be beneficial for very specific uses, there are also potential downsides.  In the category of Dependency Issues, the problem is the pacifier can be habit-forming; babies may become reliant on pacifiers for comfort, leading to nighttime awakenings if the pacifier falls out.  Not mention the health concerns:  nipple confusion: introducing a pacifier too early can interfere with breastfeeding, as babies may prefer the easier sucking of a pacifier over nursing and dental problems: prolonged use of pacifiers can affect dental development, particularly if used beyond the age of two.  There are studies to suggest that children who use pacifiers may have a higher incidence of ear infections compared to those who do not.  In conclusion, pacifiers can be a helpful tool for soothing infants, but parents should weigh the benefits against potential drawbacks. It's essential to use them wisely and consider weaning off before significant dental issues arise.

Apparently we are wiser about pacifiers that you stick in the mouth than the ones you place in hands before eyes.  Have our screens become pacifiers?  Have we learned to turn to then for comfort and soothing in our time of angst, uncertainty, and fear of personal interaction?  Screens both create problems and become the solution kids and adults reach for, forming what some researchers call a “vicious cycle.”  Using smartphones as ‘digital pacifiers’ or ‘dummies’ is an increasing phenomenon in our modern society, where smartphones serve as soothing tools, digital pacifiers, for toddlers, teens, and adult.  While the term ‘pacifier’ or ‘dummy’ traditionally refers to a rubber object designed to calm babies by satisfying their innate sucking reflex, the concept has evolved in the digital age to include handheld electronic devices, particularly those with smaller screens -- smartphones and tablets.  

We all know that kids are glued to their devices.  The allure of smartphones as digital pacifiers is obvious. This is the generation who never allows themselves to be bored – or is it because we don’t allow them to be bored?  With vibrant screens, engaging apps, and an endless array of entertainment options, smartphones possess an inherent ability to captivate young minds and momentarily alleviate distress or boredom. Whether it’s the engaging visuals, interactive stories, educational videos, or soothing music, these devices offer an abundance of stimuli we have used to effectively distract, calm, or entertain children of all ages and this is what we carry into adulthood.  It has become our default.

In some ways, our digital devices have become tools that we use in place of religion, perhaps even the reason why the nones are growing.  We turn to the things we can hold in our hands and control in place of the God who comes in means and whom we must trust because He is in control. 

Small need not mean dying. . .

Surely you cannot help but be struck by the number of voices in alarm over the declining size of the average non-Roman Catholic congregation.  The reality is that these are small, some of them graying, but not all of them declining.  In fact, some of them remain vital and alive despite the obvious pressures placed upon them for their lack of size.  They can be found in the typical areas of the Midwest where LCMS Lutheranism has been historically strong, in the remains of a once vital Lutheran presence in the coast lands and inner cities of our nation, and in the places where you would be surprised to find them -- in the Bible belt of the South.  I tip my hat to them.   

The reality is that numbers are important and we should not say they are not simply because they are often headed in a direction that either embarrasses us or confound us.  At the same time, however, we should not equate small with dying or dead.  Small is often simply the surface judgment imposed by numbers that stand either below the average or median of a church body or a group of them.  It is not in and of itself a description of their life together or their ministry.  I am an example of one who was formed by a small congregation that was never big even though it was often bigger than it is today.  I am not alone.  There were many pastors and teachers raised up by that small congregation over the years.  They were the fruit of God's own work which is never small -- even though the font may be its power is not.  And these church workers stand tall together with the husbands, wives, parents, and children who in their own vocation seek to live out as fully as possible the promise of God's own divine life imparted by water and the Spirit in this new birth of water and the Word.

Small may be the condition of the place -- there are plenty of places across America which are not growing or even staying the same size but declining in the overall numbers of people who live there.  That often describes the rural areas in which the resource of manual labor has been replaced by expensive mechanized agriculture.  They probably will not grow back to their glory days but that does not mean that the people there and the communities of faith that serve them are without mission or purpose or glory.  Wherever God is at work, there is His glory -- calling, gathering, enlightening, and sanctifying His Church.  There are often closer to the two or three gathered in His name but He is there among them true to His promise and with His boundless gifts.  Small may be an accurate descriptor of everything except God's work among them in Word and Sacrament.  That is never small.

So today I laud those places which are small by numbers but not declining or dead.  God bless them and those whom they serve.  God bless the pastors who serve them, the volunteer musicians who serve them, the people who do the labor that larger congregations hire out to do.  God is not done with you yet unless you are already done with Him.  Trust remains the most valuable commodity for small congregations when the signs of earthly success are few.  God remains true and His work is without limit in growing His Church in the most surprising places and where number crunchers might have given up.  Small need not mean dying and dying congregations are often filled with plenty of people who have lost the hope into which they were planted until they trust in things more than in God's Word and promises.  So lift high the cross where you are and the work will not be finished until God says it it.  God bless you.