PEWS

I was standing in our church auditorium today just looking at it. It's big. That picture at right isn't it, but it seats 1,750 people packed shoulder-to-shoulder. It's impressive in size. It's not the biggest auditorium I've ever seen, certainly - but here in Kenosha or anywhere close by, it's right up there. I'm not bragging about that. I didn't build it. It just is what it is. But as I was looking, I realized -- it's so --- so ----- so -------- so orderly. You know? Nice straight lines and all? And that tells a bigger story than you know.

Did you realize that the printing press had been in existence in China almost 800 years before it made it's debut in Europe? And yet, it didn't have the same libertaing effect on China that did in the West. Why was that?

The simple answer is efficiency. Do you realize how many characters the Chinese alphabet has? Over 80,000 - and GROWING! Each symbol represents an entire word or idea --- think about that. It's dizzying. Imagine a computer keyboard with 80,000 keys.

That's why our own phonetic alphabet with 26 characters is remarkable. All you need for endless communication and variety is 26 letters. TWENTY-SIX.

abcdefghjklmnopqrstuvwxyz ... that's it.

An infinite number of thoughts can be expressed by arranging and re-arranging these 26 shapes. So here comes Johannes Gutenberg and he gives us the printing press. The printing press was the first assembly line, the arch-type for nearly every kind of mechanization to follow. It was efficent ... it was linear ... it was sequential ... it was visual ... it was revolutionary and had impact on many things other than printing.

The linear arrangement of church pews didn't even exist before the printing press. The medieval church didn't have pews -- just a wide-open space for standing. After the printing press, church seating began to mirror the page of a book.

It re-shaped the Gospel, too. It changed the way the Gospel was conceived.

Apologize for your sins + Believe Jesus = Go to heaven.

That kind of compression of the Gospel would not have been possible prior to the age of the printing press. Medieval cathedrals told the stories of the Bible in elaborate stained-glass. But now, thru the linear nature of the printed word, the Gospel eventually became a cornerstone for the modern evangelical expression of faith.

I just thought that was kind of interesting.

By the way - I don't know if you noticed - but in the line above with the alphabet in it, did you notice that I had omitted the letter "I?" Just wanted to see how closely you were reading.

And be blessed.