MondayMorningInsight - Leadership & Encouragement for Church Leaders

Barna: 65% of Churches Have a Big Screen, Up Just 3% from 2005

Posted by: Todd
Posted on: Wed, April 30, 2008
Viewed 60
(6) comments so far

Other interesting finds:

Sending email blasts to large groups of people or to the entire church body is common to a majority of Protestant churches (56%).

Back in 2000, just one-third of Protestant churches (34%) had a church website. That exploded to 57% in 2005, and has inched upward since then to 62%.

One-eighth of Protestant churches (13%) now have blog sites or pages through which people can interact with the thoughts posted by church leaders.

Podcasting has been adopted by one out of every six churches (16%).

One out of every four Protestant churches (26%) now has some presence on one or more social networking sites (such as MySpace).

What do you think of this new research? What year is your church being ‘cutting edge’ at?

Mark Driscoll has said that every church will be cutting edge of some year. Some churches are the cutting edge of 2008. Others are the cutting edge of 1954. Yet others are the cutting edge of 1875. No matter what, your church is the cutting edge of 'some' year. Well, Barna just released a new study on churches and technology yesterday... and it finds that a full 35% of churches have not yet made the switch to any type of video projection...

Comments

if you want a Globally Recognized Avatar (the images next to your profile) get them here. Once you sign up, they will displayed on any website that supports them.

Rusty on Wed, April 30, 2008

I think the “cutting edge” question is, frankly, the wrong question to be asking. The better questions are “What technologies do we believe to be effective in serving our body and our community?” or “How might we be wise stewards both of technology but, more importantly, the message of the Gospel?”

Using technologies, in themselves, don’t make a church more or less effective.
John Cheatham on Wed, April 30, 2008

As one who loves new technology and would love to incorporate it everywhere, I agree with Rusty 100%. Setting up a blog or facebook page for a church in the a rural area with an average age of 55 would not be a good use of time. Those technologies might be better served in the youth ministry of that church. On the other hand, an urban church of college-aged and slightly older people could really benefit from those technologies. You need to keep up with your congregation, but don’t pass them - at least not too far.
Peter Hamm on Wed, April 30, 2008

You are both right…

Still,

These are some good trends imho. It means that churches are adjusting at least the way the transmit information. perhaps by doing it more in the idiom of the current times, that information will lead to transformation.
CS on Wed, April 30, 2008

I agree as well that technology is a tool that can be used effectively or misapplied, and we should never implement technology for technology’s (or novelty’s) sake.

At the same time, there are some interesting results about the mass-implementation of some of these tools. For example, Wired magazine and other tech sites around the web often point out that PowerPoint lowers the absorption and retention of information. Just google the words “powerpoint makes stupid” and see what happens.

And now, with tools like Twitter, we’re reducing things into 160-character soundbites, commercial-sized bits of info that detract from long-term thought. It’s increasing the noise to signal ratio.

Just my thoughts.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/ppt2.html

—

CS
Ray Reavis on Fri, May 02, 2008

John said “Setting up a blog or facebook page for a church in the a rural area with an average age of 55 would not be a good use of time”

With all due respect, if the congregation’s average age is 55, they need to use the communication medium most likely to reach younger people all the more urgently! I say that as someone at a church were we do have older people, and the church is dying because it’s done a poor job of witnessing to the younger generation.

The older people don’t understand why the people don’t come. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying people will come to your church just because you use facebook. But if you are NOT using the communication medium that someone uses, they won’t see your message.
John Cheatham on Fri, May 02, 2008

Ray, I’m with you on that. My point was as a ministry to the congregation, facebook would not be the way to go. It would be an awesome outreach method, though - then it could become beneficial as a ministry as it reached a younger generation.

Another thing to become aware of is stagnancy (is that a word?). If you create a facebook profile or page or a myspace page then don’t touch it, it’s effectiveness will wan. Someone needs to keep content fresh if the page is going to work.