Version 1.1 We've created an Online Communion Liturgy under the creative commons 3.0 license, meaning it's free to use and adapt, with attribution. If you look through some of our traditional communion liturgies and try to imagine them playing out online, you’ll...
Updated: 3/31/2020 at 10:20 am To all the churches that have taken your worship online at least once, WAY TO GO! Now that you’ve gotten that far, let’s look at how to make the experience even better for your participants. Many churches have been doing online...
Disruption: when a new technology significantly changes the way people live or do business, often challenging the status quo. It was in 1996 when then Vice President of Intel, Steven McGeady, claimed that the new tech boom was akin to the Reformation. He called it The Digital Reformation. His argument was not theological in nature; instead he compared the common person's level of access to technology in the modern era — to the mass access to religious freedom during the Reformation. In each case, the new paradigm led to rapid--indeed, “disruptive”--levels of cultural, political, and social-economic change. He noted that the difference between a reformation and a revolution is that reformations change everything, not just a single target.
Glocal: The idea that something is both global and local on the internet. “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all of Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth,” Jesus said in Acts 1:8. The ends of the earth have gotten a lot closer since the dawn of the internet. My denomination, The United Methodist Church, has a massive SMS text network that expands into the most remote villages in Africa. When the Ebola epidemic of 2014 hit, they used that network to offer hope, education and coordinated medical assistance, saving countless lives in the name of God. Think about that. To do that work in the past, we’d spend years training, funding, and relocating missionaries into the field, so that they could have access to just one village at a time.
Many churches struggle with becoming proficient at digital ministry. This is a slightly revised version of a 3-part article series written for my own congregation's newsletter. Screens are going to be installed soon in our sanctuary (finally!) and I wrote these articles to help those in my church to think a bit more deeply about screens than simply, "I love them" or "I hate them." I've added content here and there for this post to reflect the concerns and challenges of many congregations around technology.
A little over a year ago, I was searching for a new ChMS (Church Management System) with an integrated web-based volunteer system for my congregation. After months of searching and testing demos, I finally had my choices narrowed down to two companies. In reality, I had a strong leaning toward one of them, and after the full staff did a demo we decided to contract with them. What happened next, though, completely surprised me.
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