The Church and Technology – by Cynthia Holder Rich

See Landon Whitsitt’s Video, “Response to the Church and Technology”
See Meri MacLeod’s Essay, “Theological Education Through Interactive Technologies: Scenes of Present/Future Learning”

Tech offers the church a plethora of options — but are we ready?

Technological innovation offers endless applications for ministry, theological education, and the search for spiritual knowledge, renewal and growth in faith and discipleship.  Innovations have galloped ahead for decades.  Much of the church has not yet adapted to this reality and is not equipped to keep up.

I do not understand myself as tech-savvy.  I am, rather, tech-curious.  I direct this website with the help of my (much more) tech-savvy son, teach and publish online, and have accounts with a few social media sites.  To folks at my stage of the game or at a lower level, this may sound like a lot; the truth is there is much that I miss.  Those who serve as conversation partners this week have much more to share than I on this topic.  I have simply made a commitment to try and stay, if not truly current, at least in conversation with what is going on in tech.

But I am aware that many of my colleagues, in pastoral ministry, denominational administration, and the theological academy have not made similar commitments.  I don’t know anyone anymore in the field or in the academy (as I did in the early years of the last decade) who does not know how to use email.  But email is emblematic of the problem we face.  It has become clear that the perception of email among many groups is evolving (as all technologies do), and today, it is becoming limited in usefulness.  That is, fewer and fewer people see email as the standard venue for communication.  Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg called email “too formal” late last year.  Yes, he did so to promote a new Facebook-based messaging application.   But the truth remains that there are professionals I know (that is, not simply college students, but people with advanced degrees and real live jobs) whose smartphones are linked to their social media messaging systems, who have confessed to me that they don’t look at email much – they just don’t have time.  But the signal from their phone moves them to check their social network account.  This is just one example of how easily you can drop out of date when doing what you thought was right on track with tech.

The tech scene keeps up its inexorable process of change, and being a decade or half a decade behind means that we in the church are generally out of the game.  What does this mean for ministry, and particularly for proclaiming Jesus’ good news?  I share a few examples here from my own experiences in ministry and theological education, with the hope that readers will share their own insights to the benefit and growth in knowledge for us all.

Technology use in congregational worship

I serve as interim pastor with a congregation that installed a screen, a sound board and internet connectivity in the sanctuary a few years back.   The idea was that this would attract new members, which by all reports has not yet occurred.  What interests me is what has happened in the life of the congregation, in response to this change.  The introduction of technology into the worship space has inspired passion about the use of the screen in worship for some, and moved others to join in chronic complaint.  While not satisfied with becoming part of the chorus of “let the worship wars begin”, this new (to me) experience of leading worship in a space that is in some ways tech-equipped has moved me to reflect early and often on the place of technology in congregational ministry.

Congregations and church institutions and the creation of web ID

My experience in job searching alerted me to the state of website creation and maintenance among faith-based institutions.  Many congregations, and some seminaries, colleges and denominations, are seemingly unaware that their website has become the new front door – the first stop potential visitors, donors, students and employees make when checking them out.  Many congregation websites are pitifully out of date most of the time; the staff of most congregations were not hired with an eye to their tech capacity, and many church boards have not connected the dots sufficiently to understand the import of web communications.  As a potential pastoral leadership candidate, I understand these realities, and can roll with the deficiencies present in tech knowledge; most others in my place can too.  However, for congregations trying to reach out to people of a certain age, who have no memory of life in the pre-internet era, the problems reach deeper.  Static websites, or data that is old, leaves a negative impression with those we try to reach.  How can the church respond to this need?

For institutions, the issues run deeper.  Most institutions have IT staff, and many offer online or distance coursework.  But a lack of depth of understanding persists.  It is not unusual for institutions to linger for months over website change decisions, or to feel when a change has been achieved a sense of relief that that work won’t have to be revisited for years.  The ignorance demonstrated here is not willful but rather uncomprehending of the realities on the ground and in the “cloud”.  The speed at which tech evolves and opportunities present themselves can boggle the mind for those of us whose professional career includes years, or decades, of time before anyone knew what www. signified.

Let’s think about this for a minute…

For the too many of you reading this (and you know, I know and you know who you are) tempted to turn your back on this and ignore the reality of a problem – I encourage you to STOP, TAKE A BREATH, and CONSIDER.  The fact that people under a certain age encounter and interface with the world through a computer or a phone in the way that I grew up following Time, Newsweek, the newspaper, tv and radio means that the church has a choice to make.  It is the same choice we always have – to change with the times, to find effective and meaningful ways to proclaim the same life-giving Good News that God gave to us a couple millennia ago.  Are we up for that?  Our future capacity to reach out with this Good News to people who really need to hear it depends on our answer.

On Wednesday, Meri MacLeod and Landon Whitsitt join the conversation.