We’ll go from west coast to east coast today as the Wall Street Journal covers technology in churches. The piece focuses on churches trying new methods, like MySpace and Flickr (sounds like our web 2.0 series). A few of the good quotes include:
“It’s a way for us to say, ‘Hey, come and see,'” said Father Gray [of Boston’s Church of the Advent, who created a MySpace profile for his parish]. “It gets our name out there. It puts us on the mental map, the emotional map.” …
“We’re called to get the word out,” said Bobby Gruenewald, new campus development leader at LifeChurch.tv, a group of evangelical churches in Oklahoma, Texas and Arizona. “We want to engage people where they’re at. If MySpace is where they are, that’s where we want to be.” …
Technology is a tool that Christians should “redeem” for religious use, said Mark Batterson, lead pastor of National Community Church, which holds its services in movie theaters in Washington, D.C. “In the 15th century, Guttenberg used the printing press to make copies of the Bible,” he said. “The church needs to find creative ways to help get some great content into these iPods.”
Oh, and some guy named Brad Abare is quoted, too.
A.B. Dada
May 17, 2006
Our rock-style band has a lot of original worship music and I’ve been thinking about getting them to start podcasting their worship sessions for people to listen to in the car and on their jogs.
While sermons/messages are great, it is a big issue getting the pastor to present the sermon in such a way that it is still interactive with the attenders AND those listening through MP3 format.
Many times the pastors will try to interact with the audience which leaves empty spaces in the podcasts, which definitely makes it less effective.
Anyone have any options for those problems? Edit them out? Audience mics?