Saturday, June 07, 2008

Reaching the World (Wide Web)

As a Christian it is important to reach the rest of the world that doesn't know Jesus. One of the biggest complaints I've heard about the Church is that it is a social club only for its members. While myself and I'm sure many other Christians see the validity in this view, sometimes it is hard to know how to get out of that rut and reach people who aren't already sitting next to you.

One thing I love seeing, and hope dearly it is working, is Churches just trying different things. As a big user of technology and someone that is almost never separated from e-mail/facebook/Internet/twitter it is cool too see Christians and Churches using and utilizing some of these technologies.



Church Marketing Sucks pointed to a Church that projected a Twitter feed onto the big screen at the front of the church and actually encouraged people to contribute to the sermon and the worship experience of every participant. Reading about this from someone who was one of the driving forces behind the experiment, it sounds like it was a success. People could comment on different aspects of the service/sermon or even carry out a public dialog about what was being said/felt/experienced. I bet this would make for a much closer knit community especially if more dialog was encouraged after the service (in a face-to-face environment). Plus it would be a lot more acceptable to read from a digital bible.

I truly think these are the types of things that Churches should be trying, because what worked 5-10-50 years ago probably won't be effective in today's world. Although this will not work in every situation, every Church, for every person, but each Church has to find their own niche.

Not to toot my own horn, but I actually thought something like this would be an interesting idea a few years ago. I think I was sitting in on one of my Dad's sermon's and I thought it might be a cool idea to make it more of a collaborative effort with the entire congregation. My idea involved laptops and tablet PCs and more of an IM format, but it would accomplish a very similar outcome. I think this might also be very useful if a number of people in the group are not clear on something. Either the pastor or the rest of the group can see this immediately and react and adapt the message.

What do you think?

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