Since as early as the fourth century, stained-glass windows have been a mainstay of Christian churches. Their intricate designs and muted, kaleidoscopic light have stirred pious feeling and serenity in innumerable parishioners, and provided gorgeously fragmented works of art to look upon during services.
In certain epochs of history, they were the equivalent of television, people’s main source of stories outside of reading. Denominations have come and gone, but the stained-glass window has remained.
Times change, however, and to stay relevant churches also are transforming to some extent. And it’s for this reason that Rob Thomas, from his office and makeshift movie studio in Lake Highlands, is concocting the stained-glass window’s 21st century counterpart.
“We live in such media-saturated times, stained-glass windows don’t affect people like they used to,” says Thomas, a 33-year-old man of relaxed enthusiasm, sporting an unshaven look verging on beard.
“To get through to people, you need to speak the language they speak. And everyone I know is totally fluent in the language of movies and television. If you’re trying to reach people, not using that media language is almost unheard of these days.”
Years ago, Thomas saw a new day dawning for church services, a day in which sermons would not always be delivered against a backdrop of stained glass and sculptures, but sometimes beside video screens featuring computer-generated animations — of butterflies fluttering over endless green fields, of vines growing at supernaturally rapid speeds, of the planet Earth as seen from space.
He saw a day when congregations wouldn’t pick up hymnals in order to sing together, but would simply look to a screen, where lyrics would be projected over images of burning candles and hovering angels. He saw this coming, and because of his years of experience in video production, he wanted in on the ground floor.
Acting on this premonition, in 2002 Thomas pooled his savings and founded Igniter Media, a company dedicated to creating “visual resources that declare truth.” Translated, this equates to short videos — both live action and computer-generated — designed to play various roles in church services.
Some provide bite-sized lessons in Christian values or brief moments of comic relief or inspiration. Some serve as punchy, visually arresting segues between portions of a service, similar to segues used in cable news broadcasts. Others act as backdrops for sermons or songs, featuring such images as crosses on a wind-swept hill or towering panels of stained glass. The list goes on.
“Fifteen years ago, no one was using video screens in their services,” Thomas says. “They might have wanted to, but they couldn’t. There was a technology lag. You needed thousands of dollars of equipment. Now all you need is a projector and a laptop, and the industry has just exploded.”
Since its inception, Igniter has sold media to more than 10,000 churches, Thomas says, not only in the United States, but also in such far-flung countries as Lithuania, Egypt, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. They’ve appeared in mega-churches such as Dallas’ Landmark Church and Saddleback Church in California, and in smaller worship venues like the one to which Thomas belongs — the Watermark Community Church, which used to meet at Lake Highlands High School, his alma mater.
Greg Atkinson, technical arts director at Bent Tree Bible Church in Carrollton and a user of Igniter’s products, says videos help to “break down the walls of anxiety and distrust people have inside.”
“Videos speak to the heart in ways other arts can not,” Atkinson says. “I’d say a majority of churches are already using video in their services, or at least seriously considering it.”
But while there were only a handful of Christian media producers when Igniter began, the number has grown exponentially since then, supply striving to keep pace with soaring demand. This increased competition spread the industry thinner, causing everyone’s earnings to plummet. Formerly successful video producers were moving back in with their parents, Thomas says.
In response to these diminishing returns, Thomas founded Worship House Media in 2005, his attempt to turn the changing tide to his advantage. Where Igniter creates videos, Worship House only sells them, stocking the work of dozens of producers and providing a “one-stop-shop for pastors looking for some good Sunday videos.”
The company has been a success, Thomas said, and faces only one major competitor, Sermon Spice, who he refers to as “the PC to Worship House’s Apple … They sell more videos, but we’re more concerned with quality and good design.”
Thomas’ expansionist ambitions don’t end there. Christian media conferences and seminars are in the works, he says, and he recently launched a magazine titled “Collide”, dedicated to facilitating the “beneficial collision” of churches and mass media. The magazine imparts advice to pastors about creating church-oriented media content and on aspects of pop culture that merit further examination.
“Pastors need to know about things like blogs and ‘Fight Club,’ and a lot of them don’t,” Thomas says. “They could learn a lot from these things that’ll help them reach people. Sometimes, you can say more with a five-minute clip from ‘Fight Club’ than you could say in an hour-long sermon.”
All this traces back to Thomas’ enormous faith in the power of visuals. Video is gradually inheriting the stained-glass window’s former role, he believes, but if a short movie clip can say more than a preacher, could media eventually replace some clergy as well? He points to the growing popularity of satellite churches — small, franchise-like venues that mega-churches broadcast their sermons to by remote feed — as evidence people are willing to congregate to watch a video screen together.
But the idea of a fully video-driven service will always be ridiculous, he says. Because they’re often depended upon to be a source of stability in changing times, there’s only so much modernization churches will tolerate.
“The human element will always be the most fundamental thing, because going to church is largely about that connection between fellow believers,” Thomas says. “A church that doesn’t have a healthy human connection is a dead church. When it all comes down, every type of media is just a means of conveying something. It’s about bridging that gap, trying to build that connection.
“And if it looks good, that doesn’t hurt either.”