When Technology Comes to Church
What happens when technology comes to church? For kingdom-minded Christians, this is the logical question to ask following my prior essay, Is Technology Neutral? Once we’ve agreed in principle that technology is no neutral force in human affairs, this raises questions for its usage in all areas of life.
For those who worship in most Protestant churches today, technology is everywhere. Technologies aren’t just overhead screens and sound systems, though those are most familiar to us. Technology is any manmade tool used to extend our natural capacities through time and space. It amplifies sound. It projects lyrics. It cools and warms the air. It is ubiquitous to our experience in our homes, and yes, increasingly in our churches too.
Assuming the conclusions from my prior essay, we will now evaluate the use of technology in the church. To give this question context, we will also consider the purpose of our corporate gathering and how technological practices shape that gathering. Finally, I will offer some suggestions for the appropriation of technology in the church.
What Are We Doing in Worship?
Churches always risk their integrity when they neglect the question: “Why are we here?” We gather weekly to sing, pray, teach, give, and serve—and yet it is easy to forget why these practices matter, why we do them, and what they do to us.
What do these practices mean? When the church gathers, it is a time for the called-out people of God to redirect their lives again to Him. They have been reconciled to Him through Christ, and they gather weekly to confess this, rejoice in it, and inhabit the new way of life the Spirit has granted. Their assembly is to equip them to labor for the Gospel in their community and throughout the world. They desire that through their sacrificial ministry they will serve and bring shalom to others. Animating all of this is God’s Word that testifies to the redemptive drama that His people are to hear and proclaim daily [1]. It is this experience that technologies can either facilitate or hinder. And irrespective of whether technology is used with good or bad intentions, it nevertheless does change the church’s worship in some way or another.
What Is Worship Doing to Us?
Our worship means something. Yes there is a reason behind the rhyme and rhythm of it all. There is something happening to us. We aren’t the sole actors in worship—in truth, we’re more akin to observers responding to the redemptive drama that God, the chief actor, has enacted before our eyes. As Christians gather, one important question to ask is not necessarily, “How are we going to ‘do church’?” The question must also be, “What are these God-ordained, worship practices doing to us?”
Spiritual formation is central to thinking about the church’s engagement with technology. In other words, we realize that there is profound change that occurs within us as individuals, and corporately as we engage in various practices. Whether it is eating a meal on the grounds, singing a hymn acapella following a stirring sermon, or placing a handwritten tithe check into an offering plate, these all form us to think and feel certain ways about community, mission, sacrifice, and beauty [2]. The content of our message or doctrine does not stand on its own. There is an atmosphere or spiritual climate in which our practices occur that forms us [3]. The question to which we now turn is, “What happens when technologies are introduced into this complex web of practices?”
Technology in the Mix
When technologies are introduced into any setting, things change. Introduce wolves into a suburb they don’t naturally inhabit: You will not have wolves plus that town; rather you’ll have a different town. New animals change ecology. Likewise, new technologies change culture. They change society in ways we sometimes see immediately, but also in ways we cannot anticipate.
Let’s consider some examples: Throughout the centuries, churches have employed various technologies concerning their music. Most prominent in the twentieth century have been hymnals and screens. Space does not permit a lengthy analysis of both, but let’s consider how they change the milieu of the gathering.
With hymnals, for example, musical literacy arguably has a greater chance of survival. They are moored in Christianity’s musical heritage, since holding a book connotes historicity. Singers must attend to the structure of the notes (whether they read music or not), while their hands are tangibly engaged with the words. On the other hand, the voices of those whose heads are in a book may not be sound forth as well in resounding harmony. Additionally, hymnals gradually can become expensive to maintain, especially as new songs are written and adopted into the Protestant canon, which can remain excluded from a bound volume such as a hymnal [4].
Screens too are unique. They can display lyrics, sermon notes, and announcements. They can aid the aging eyes in the congregation. Yet screens change corporate gatherings in problematic ways too. They foster the image-driven sensibilities we are cautioned of in Scripture (Ex. 20:4; 1 Jn. 2:15). Psychologically, they fragment the way sermon content is processed through slide-by-slide presentations, as opposed to a more natural aural and visual engagement with a human preacher. Perhaps less obvious to the casual observer, they can gradually erode the ability of believers to read music.
The underlying point is this: Both screens and hymnals aren’t neutral. But even then, it is not simply a matter of weighing pros and cons. These come packaged together and form congregations individually and collectively. The decision, then, is not between God-honoring technology and Satanic-driven ones. The choice is between two nuanced, complex tools that necessitate textured Christian wisdom to evaluate.
Yet it is not only our tools that merit scrutiny. It is our assumptions about technology that merit evaluation too.
Examining Our Assumptions
People often gravitate toward innovation for its own sake, simply because technology is available and is capable of much. This utilitarian ethos defines how we think of technology in general. If there is a task to be done, we defer to whatever will help accomplish it more quickly. This is because technology, as we know it today, has emerged in an age where efficiency is considered a virtue.
The task-driven mentality that accompanies modern technology is one Christians often impose on church practice. Because singing songs and giving tithes are considered tasks to be performed, tools must be used to accomplish them. We attempt to solve religious problems or needs with technologies [5]. However, this can be dangerous. When we forget why we engage in specific acts of worship, we make use of tools inadequate to the task. We may even use them when they aren’t really necessary.
For example, technology is often used to solve illusory problems. Consider the modern “need for speed.” We always want the latest gadget because it is faster than the old version. After all, Smartphones aren’t just “smart” because of their features—they are much quicker! Often in church, because people prefer rapid reception of content, we attempt to appeal to that proclivity. However, the wired church can unknowingly acquire the implicit value of speed—one foreign to Scripture’s portrait of worship and sanctification. In fact, patience is called for in our religious experience. I as much as the next pastor want for congregants to be in their Sunday School classes on time. Yet we shouldn’t mind if the watching world looks at our car-filled parking lot at 12:01pm and thinks, “What a royal waste of time!” [6]
A Practical Engagement with Technology: A Few Suggestions
It is easy to only see a technology’s benefits and not its disadvantages. Often we may solve one problem, while creating another simultaneously. We should therefore (1) be cautious to utilize something we don’t understand, and (2) sometimes resist the pressures of the modern world in making decisions about technology. Our penchant for haste must be bridled in deference to prayerful reflection and scriptural consideration.
We should also ask, “What problem are we trying to solve with this tool?” Often we perceive something to be a problem in the church only because we find it to be a problem in our everyday life. As mentioned above, speed is perhaps the most clandestine intruder into churches. If efficiency is the priority, then perhaps this reveals just how captive the church has really become to the spirit of the age. Inefficiency can indeed be a problem in some aspects of a church’s life, but we must be slow to arrive at this diagnosis.
Finally, we should ask if authentic spirituality is being undermined by technological practices. Often in modern life, virtues like patience and attentiveness get lost in the shuffle. The same, of course, applies to the corporate gathering. Worship is about the spiritual formation of a people for God’s own possession. Thus, it is always important to study the tools comprising this process. As long as technology exists, the need for wisdom will continue until Christ returns. Only then will our technological impulses be finally satisfied by the finished work of God.
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[1] Michael Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of Christ-Centered Worship (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2002). I am indebted heavily to Horton for the “drama-theater” scheme for thinking about Christian worship.
[2] James K.A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 17-88. Smith provides a compelling and helpful account of how practices, both in the larger culture and within worship, shape our desires both positively and negatively. Social phenomena, like technology, would be right on target with his account of things.
[3] Mark Driscoll, Gary Breshears, Vintage Church: Timeless Truths and Timely Methods (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2008). Driscoll discusses technology at length in this book. In fact, over 30 pages are devoted to the use of technology in church ministry. What is conspicuously missing is any sustained caution about the problems that can accompany technology. Driscoll assumes the utilitarian vision of technology to which I allude later in the essay and sees technology simply as a “common grace.”
[4] T. David Gordon, Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns: How Pop Culture Rewrote the Hymnal (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2010). Gordon provides a striking historical and social sketch of how the way evangelical Christians have envisioned church music has been forged through cultural trends.
[5] Evgeny Morozov, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (New York: Public Affairs, 2011), 308. “But as it is irresponsible to prescribe cough medicine for someone who has cancer, so it is to apply more technology to social and political problems that are not technological in nature.”
[6] Marva Dawn, A Royal “Waste” of Time: The Splendor of Worshiping God and Being Church for the World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999).
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