ABSTRACT
Preachers today face a highly competitive communicative environment. Many of their congregation on Sundays will already have glanced at a weekend paper, listened to the radio, or caught sight of an advertising hoarding before entering church. It is necessary to develop a more sophisticated understanding of how people's audio-visually saturated environment, and television in particular, cultivate audiences into particular habits of attending, viewing and listening. Television, amongst many other media, has also contributed towards a change in how people expect to be spoken to in the public sphere. The language of television is markedly different from the language of the Victorian pulpit. It has also influenced expectations about the length, style and content of public discourse. The advent of electronic audio-visual stimuli could be feared as dealing a fatal blow to preaching. A range of writers have identified the real danger of alienating or at least distancing listeners by relying on the traditional monological style of preaching.
