I’ve only watched one Veggie Tales story. It was a televised Christmas special some years ago. I thought it was cute, and well done. It didn’t convince me to change our practice in our church to NOT use videos in Sunday school or any children’s programming, though. It’s not that we believed that there’s something inherently evil in media. We just held the conviction that: (1) kids were exposed to enough passivity-inducing media during the week—they didn’t need more of that in church; (2) Christian education is about relationships, so we wanted lots of quality relationship time between teacher and child and among the children; (3) given that for most educational programming we had the kids for less than an hour we felt is was poor stewardship to give up that precious time to someone else or to entertainment.
The fact that I never watched any of the Veggie Tales videos, and that we didn’t have them around the house, probably had a lot to do with the fact that my kids were already at an age beyond its target audience. But perhaps not—we were never big consumers of “Christianese” products. And to this day our kids seem immune to Christian marketing kitsch.
There’s an interesting interview on the Leadership Journal.net website with Phil Vischer, creator of Veggie Tales. His story is a classic modern day rags-to-riches-to-rags (sort of) story. I found the interview interesting in many ways. First, I felt bad for the guy. It’s never a pretty thing to see one’s dreams and creation fail. Second, the interview had several elements we’ve talked about over time:
- The danger of adopting “good ideas†or “what’s hot†from the business world in ministry (Church) contexts
- The important reminder that success is not the issue in ministry, obedience is
- The danger of our constant misguided overfocus on numbers in ministries
- People’s tendency to engage in “magical thinking†when trying to arrive at meaning (and how religion and religiosity can feed that)
- The unfortunate penchant for using metaphors for vision, explanation, or as “insight,†which leads to loopy ideas, misunderstanding, and lack of critical thinking
As for Phil Vischer, I only wish him well and much success with his Jellyfish Labs venture. Obviously he’s a man of talent and imagination, two qualities in short supply these days. Also, he’s written a book about his Veggie Tales venture, which sounds like a great read. I’m adding it to the pile.
“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” Groucho Marx
