By Rev. Aisha Bascom,
Broadcast Faith, Editor
Oftentimes in Christendom iconoclastic media ministries are deemed secularistic. Yet, these same Christians “are as immersed in digital technologies and social networks”1 as their non-Christian counterparts. Consequently, the spiritual potential of tech tools have expanded beyond mere mass outreach and now serves to effectively engage and disciple end users 24 hrs a day, seven days a week. Whether a church is a store front ministry with less than 200 members or an international gathering via varied media outlets, both members and non-members can benefit from an ongoing stream of edifying communication.
Companies like youversion.com, mosio.com , and eztexting.com enable congregants to use their mobile devices to text questions and offer feedback to a speaker in real time. A missionary in dire need can Skype into her home church for corporate prayer. Youth leaders can hourly IM teen members with scriptural nuggets to help them “keep their way pure” (Psalm 119:9 NIV). Preteens can now inform their youth leaders in real time about lifestyles choices made outside of the church on Gospelr , a Christian-themed Twitter analogue. While the more technically savvy congregants can memorialize snippets from
A poignant message or spiritual experience on Tangle.com, a Christian alternative to YouTube, or simply podcast the entire sermon on broadcastfaith.com.
Evangelists and Biblical teachers no longer have to wait for an invitation to minister to a crowd, they can blog about spiritual revelations to an international audience from the comfort of their home. And, televangelists and conference leaders can use coveritlive.com, a web based Live Blogging tool, to broadcast live commentary to their readers.
If the management of it all overwhelms you, seesmic.com has created a web application that allows users to “aggregate content from other social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook,”2 making ones digital footprint look more like a proverbial walk in the park.
As a result, the application and presentation may vary across denominations and will continue to do so as technology advances, but the church is at a point where cross-congregational digital outreach can no longer be an experimental ministry for progressive churches, but rather, an integral part of every church’s culture.
In fact, according to a recent Barna technology study: “podcasting….found a more eager audience among Christians than non-Christians…38% of evangelicals and 31% of other born again Christians had listened to a sermon or church teaching via digital recordings…, compared with 17% of other adults. In macro-terms, an enormous audience of roughly 45 million Americans reports going digital to acquire church sermon and teaching content. In all, one out of every four adults – 23% – said they downloaded a church podcast in the past week.”
Thus, proving that the marriage of technology and ministry is the call of the future!
2 ^ http://www.centernetworks.com/seesmic-relaunches-website-video-service-bottom
