Worship Weblog
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Boston Globe on high-tech worship
From an article last week in the Boston Globe:
Annual sales of religious software have reached the $80 million mark, according to a 2004 report from Packaged Facts, a market research company that tracks religious publishing. More than 60 percent of Protestant congregations now use large-screen projection systems, many computer-driven, and show video clips during worship, according to a September 2005 survey from Barna Research Group, a leading Christian trend tracker. ...
True believers in religious software technology say it’s opening avenues to the divine by making the quest for holy knowledge faster, easier, and more comprehensive. But even some of the believers are concerned that the technology runs a risk of drawing attention away from the intended message.
‘‘The thing that is all-inspiring to us is God,” said Ziegler, who says that technology that gets too slick could become ‘‘a distraction.”
‘‘We don’t want the thing that is all-inspiring to be the [software] program.”
The article goes on to quote Calvin professor Quentin Schultze, author of the CICW publication High-Tech Worship?
‘‘Faith is a community enterprise with accountability, encouragement, support, and discernment,” said Quentin Schultze, professor of communications at Calvin College and author of ‘‘Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age” (Baker Academic, 2004).
‘‘What does it mean to be religious or spiritual or to flourish? Those answers come from the community. . . . The problem with lots of new technology is the individualization of belief rather than community-based belief. In its worst form, the individual uses software to create their own religion.”
More about High-Tech Worship? by Quentin Schultze, including an audio interview on Michigan Public Radio.
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