Communicating for Life, by Quentin J. Schultze

Media literacy is an issue picking up steam in the church, as I discovered when I found myself attending two conferences on the subject last year. John Peterson, director of public media ministry and electronic media production for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and Tex Sample each addressed multimedia possibilities and worship.

Peterson and Sample are both media-savvy educators who place the swarm of available means of communication in the context of the Holy Spirit's activity. Each stressed that media literacy is important for communicating the gospel well in our congregations and neighborhoods. But my colleagues at each forum, confronting the large array of information technologies and the prevalence of glitches with the equipment, were tempted to bury their heads in the sand and limit themselves to the office word processor.

Quentin Schultze, professor of communication arts and sciences at Calvin College, takes media literacy to a deeper level. He reminds us that media literacy is not about a technological keeping up with the Joneses. Rather, it fits into the wider context of how each person uses God's gift of communication.