SB: First, let me say thanks for taking the time to chat, as well as thanks for writing what I found to be an enlightening, encouraging, and provocative book. I think the implications of what you've written are simply staggering, so I'm grateful for the food for thought.

SH: Thanks for the invitation. Very kind of you to say, I'm glad you enjoyed the book.

SB:The crux of your argument is, I think, summed up in this statement: "Whenever methods or media change, the message automatically changes along with them." I think there might be a corollary statement here as well. When cultural media change but ecclesial forms do not, does the message also change? Can we avoid this question by simply not changing our forms?

SH: Great question. If church forms are static the message doesn't really change. At the same time; however, when cultural forms evolve, they inevitably change our minds. In other words, new media forms erode our capacity to receive the older articulations of the message. While at the same time, these new cultural forms enhance our capacity to accept new articulations of the message. For example, modernity articulated the gospel in a linear, sequential formula. This is losing resonance in an image-based culture. As a consequence, in postmodernity we see a rise in Eastern expressions of faith, which reflect the bias of icons. This leads to the revival and appreciation of mystery, narrative, and experience in religious life in the West.

This is a complicated way of describing the struggle many people have. How do we keep the "gospel" relevant in a changing culture? New cultural forms demand a response from the church. This is at the heart of the incarnation-Jesus came speaking the language and using the customs of the Ancient Near East. That is pretty straightforward for most evangelicals.

But here's the rub. Few of us realize that the moment we innovate our methods to be "relevant" we unintentionally change the message. The modern rational gospel vs. postmodern experiential gospel are not the same message, they are not necessarily contradictory or inconsistent, but neither are they synonymous. My hope is that we will learn to be more intentional about understanding how the message changes with our new methods. That's why I wrote the book.

SB: You mention Gutenberg's press as introducing a foundational shift in the way in which we interact with information, and as a result changing society as a whole. Is it fair to say that the printing press made the Reformation possible?

SH: Absolutely. Without the printing press the Reformation is impossible. Solo Scriptura is predicated upon the availability of books for the masses. One cannot locate authority in "scripture alone" when a limited set of manuscripts are held by an elite scribal class. That is pretty obvious.

Less obvious however is how printing lead to another related mark of the Reformation-a challenge to papal authority. In short, authority is derived from information control. That control was lost when the Bible was printed in vernacular tongue; it introduced a crack in the information dam. Increased access to information drains and decentralizes authority. Not so fun for the pope. A strange and unintended consequence to all this however was a new form of idolatry. As the public gained access to the printed Bible, they venerated the medium itself-a printed, bound, book-as holy.

As recently as last year I was preaching in a church and read a passage of scripture from my manuscript instead of the Bible. Afterwards a member of the older generation said she was very concerned that I didn't read it from the Bible itself. The legacy is still with us.