Multi-Tasking and Sermon Preparation.
Pastors and preachers, if anything in the world requires all of our concentration, it is sermon preparation. In the world in which we live, it is tempting to do sermon work in very unstable environments (a term I use loosely here, not as in a war zone) filled with distractions. We must work and strive to find time away from distractions and interruptions to spend time alone with God focusing on hearing his voice and then clearly planning the communication of God’s word to God’s people.
Bill Keller writes about how the Twitter Trap is making us dumber.
The most obvious drawback of social media is that they are aggressive distractions. Unlike the virtual fireplace or that nesting pair of red-tailed hawks we have been live-streaming on nytimes.com, Twitter is not just an ambient presence. It demands attention and response. It is the enemy of contemplation. Every time my TweetDeck shoots a new tweet to my desktop, I experience a little dopamine spritz that takes me away from . . . from . . . wait, what was I saying?
Al Mohler writes on the Dangers of Digital Fixation and it’s results for attention span in our children.
Dr. Christopher Lucas of the New York University School of Medicine explains that the kind of attention demanded by the digital screen is very different from that required, for example, by a classroom or a book. The child in the classroom has to pay attention without immediate reward and learn to maintain that attention. When reading, a child has to supply the reward by means of imagination.But, when focused on a digital screen, the child’s attention is rewarded by “frequent intermittent rewards” in the form of hormones released into the brain. The child may grow dependent on these rewards and lose the ability to maintain attentiveness without the pleasurable charges to the brain.
Russ Moore points out the dangers of Christian romance novels.
How many disappointed middle-aged women in our congregations are reading these novels as a means of comparing the “strong spiritual leaders” depicted there with what by comparison must seem to be underachieving lumps lying next to them on the couch?This is not to equate morally “romance novels” with the grave soul destruction of pornography. But it is worth asking, “Is what I’m consuming leading me toward contentment with my spouse (or future spouse) or away from it? Is it pointing me to the other in one-flesh union or to an eroticized embodiment of my own desires? Is this the mystery or a mirage?
