What is technology?
Posted on April 19, 2005
What is technology? This may seem like a strange question coming from someone who maintains a blog called Church Tech Matters with a tagline of ‘Equipping the church to effectively use technology to reach people for Christ’. I read several blogs by others with a similar focus and we all seem to have a heart for technology in ministry, and we generally learn from each other and offer insight, while sharing new ideas. There are different areas within ‘technology’ that each of us tend to focus on more than other areas, due to our strengths, knowledge, training, gifts, etc., and I would venture to say that we would generally agree that technology covers alot of area and there is importance and relevance to all of it.
It doesn’t matter whether your in IT in corporate America or in IT in the local church, when you tell the average person on the street you work in IT, they have their impression of what they think you do. I have spent over 10 years in IT in the corporate world and 9 times out of 10, when I am in the conversation of ’so, what do you do?’, and I say I am in IT, the other person says, ‘oh, you fix computers, huh?’. I used to go to great lengths to describe what exactly I did, and clarifying that writing code or whatever was not the same as ‘fixing computers’. It took quite awhile for me to accept the fact that I ain’t gonna win this one and I have resigned myself to just saying ‘yep, that’s exactly right, I fix computers’. (To be fair, as far as I know, all that those people in payroll do is sign paychecks all day!)
The point to this story (yes, there is actually a point to the story) is technology is a big thing and there are many facets to it. One thing that I spend time pondering is how do we bring ‘technology’ to a small church with a very small budget or no budget? There are some low cost/no cost options, such as open source, which I am a big fan of, but you still have to buy the hardware, which is not always an easy task for some churches. So, that’s one dilemma.
Today I read this in the House Church blog:
“”The number of house churches in the USA has probably doubled in the past 18 months, from 2,500 to 5,000,”" according to participants at a symposium organized by Church Multiplication Associates’ Neil Cole in Los Angeles from 25-28 April 2005. “”The main growth comes from missionary groups aiming to reach the unchurched with the Gospel and involve them in multipliable discipleship structures,”" says Cole.
Wow, that is huge. It’s easy to see the good work that mega churches are doing, due to their size, but we sure don’t hear much about the other end of the spectrum - house churches, or even new startup churches. What type of technology does a house church need, if any? The original church in Acts has alot in common with today’s house churches. They didn’t have their buildings, pews, organs, stage, church staff, etc. They met in homes and anywhere the people were that needed to hear the message of Jesus. But the whole idea of ‘church’ was a new concept to them.
There has been alot of innovation in church over the years, over the centuries and it just so happens that we are at a time when technology is driving much of the innovation in many churches. We need to be careful that this technology does not get in the way of the true message we are trying to convey.
The technology is simply a method of spreading the message. As I have heard more than one pastor say, the methods will change, but the message must always remain the same. The technology will change, there will be more cool stuff come down the pipe, but it always need to enhance the message of Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.
I have some good friends that have been part of a house church for quite awhile and just recently left it to take part in starting a new church. They are really doing some good work and their new church is growing. This makes me wonder how can a larger, more established church help a startup church, in a way that will not cost this startup alot of money, if any at all?
Just something to think about.”
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