WW--Churches Shouldn't Use Technology

• If they didn’t need it in Acts, why do we need it today?
• The Bible was good enough for a very long time.
• Um, like, it’s really expensive.
• We are supposed to adorn ourselves with virtue, not technological make-up.
• Why do we think we need to lower ourselves to competition with the world.
• How can you tell a teenage girl that she shouldn’t wear a mini-skirt to entice the boys when you use projection screens and rock bands to entice the lost?
• If you’re going to move in this direction, why even bother preaching in person? Why not produce a preaching movie and use the best lighting, effects, and sound elements to enhance it to the maximum degree? The point is that the current church service is just a borrowed art form from Roman drama, which any average movie does far more effectively than the most multi-media church service ever will.
• The distinction between platform and content is false. The medium is the message, and certain media interact with people differently than the historic Christian faith has been doing for centuries.
• The power is in the blood and the word. Why do you need to doll it all up to convey that power?
• I miss hymnals that I can take home and reproduce worship with my children.
• A $300,000 media system or $300,000 to the homeless and hungry orphans?
• Dennis Prager uses the Sabbath as a time for freedom from technology. How ironic that we would clutter up the church assembly with such encroachments.
• Rock concerts fixate you upon the performers. Likewise, church concert services fixate you upon the band or the preacher rather than upon Christ.
• Doesn’t the idea of learning from MTV and advertising strike anybody as particularly heinous?
• Are we trusting the technique or the Holy Spirit.
• Is evangelism worth the cost in reverence?
• We already worship the television screen in our homes, do we really need to do so in church as well?
• You shouldn’t have children under the age of 2 exposed to television anyhow.
• Did Christianity not grow before there was multimedia?
• I miss hymnals, which allowed me to create worship services at home with my kids. How can I do that with the modern church?

Post-show thoughts: "People under 50 don't remember what they hear. They remember what they see. If you look at a church that's dying, they have nothing for the eye," says Doug Adams, Director of the Center for Arts, Religion, and Education at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. You can lament that this is the case, or you can recognize that this is the case and work to act wisely as a result of your recognition. Not all technology cultivates relationship and reverence. But neither does all technology hinder it. The question is not whether to use technology, but which technology in what ways and to what degree for what purpose. There are certainly traditional churches aplenty. Let them continue their way, and let others seek to reach those who will not be reached in the older way. This is really no different than a missionary learning to speak the language. Americans don't speak English anymore. They speak images. Churches that are serious will have worship pastors, teaching pastors, children's pastors, etc. Churches that are serious about reaching 2007 America will begin to have media pastors so that the worship service can become the work of interactive art it is supposed to be. Just always remember that the purpose is not primarily to reach the people in the pews, but to allow the people in the pews to participate in something that reaches God.