Rotary-Dial Phones & Cell Phones
I carry around my cell phone all the time. The daggone thing drives me up the wall at times. People anywhere at anytime can contact you. Furthermore, some create the oppressive expectation that just because I have a cell phone that I should answer at any time a phone call occurs. Alas, I digress!
On top of this, the advent of texting has totally reinvented the way we look at communication. No longer is a cell phone just a device to call someone, it is now a device to transmit typed messages, often containing horrific grammar. Don’t get me wrong, I love texting…but I still have to make sure the rules of grammar are applied. In other words, as a youth/young adult pastor, by the time I get ONE message out fifteen have already flooded my inbox. This a slow journey!
As I was texting a friend the other day I remembered my days as a kid spent at the home of my great-grandparent’s. Whenever I needed to call home, I used the old rotary-dial phone. Some of you may not even know what I’m talking about. You had to select the number and spin the dial around. If you dialed a one, you heard one “click” on the phone. If you dialed a nine, you heard, “click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click” on the phone. You get the point, I hope.
Think about this for a moment. The goal of the rotary phone and texting are the exact same; communicating to the people with whom you want to communicate. This goal has never changed but has only gotten faster and more advanced throughout the years.
I wish the Church could learn some lessons from the worldviews of the rotary-dial phone and texting. Maybe we wouldn’t be so threatened by change. Culture and church are not static entities. Both change over time. What I see, however, is a rotary-dial kind of Christianity attempting to communicate in relevant ways with a texting generation. It just ain’t happening!
May we learn the values of the rotary-dial and texting and see them not as opposites but as complementary of each other. May we recognize that each is of a specific period in the life of a culture. May we not seek to banish one and lift up the other but allow both to be what they are, products of a particular cultural time and place.
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I agree,my friend, that they are indeed complimentary. I believe that we too quickly devalue that which is less current in favor of the trend of the day. We do so, however, at a cost. There is a tremendous richness that comes from learning of and from the generation that came before ours. There would be no cell phone had the rotary dial phone not come beforepredates us, let us glean the richness of our heritage. Each generation builds upon the previous one; to disregard it is to weaken our foundation. Just as there are foundational tenets from the rotary dial phone present in the cell phone, so there are foundational tenets of the historic church present (and necessary – essential, even) in the church today.