[This is part of a series of posts we are doing as personal blog posts to feed your souls. Check out the rest of them here.]
Last week I was catching up on old podcasts and listened to the Vanderbloemen Leadership Podcast recapping their first year of podcasting. In their discussion around technology and communications in the church, William Vanderbloemen made a statement that, from his perspective, this may be the one area where the church is not lagging behind the rest of culture.
While I might not fully agree with this statement, I do think it is worth celebrating how far church leaders have come when it comes to embracing new technologies and digital communication. Take a look at the App store and you will see the Bible app as one of the most downloaded apps along with countless church apps. There is even a Top Level Domain: .church that is becoming widely embraced by many churches!
Five years ago I felt like I had to beg pastors to pay attention to Facebook if they could get past laughing at me for even considering social media a legitimate ministry opportunity. Today, there is no selling the why of social media to church leaders as they are eager to dig into the how. We have come a long way and for that I’m grateful, optimistic, and excited for the future!
What has led to this mass adoption and innovation in the church?
- Strong Leaders Modeling the Way – Life.Church has no doubt led the way in both creating technology and modeling how to utilize it in the most effective and efficient ways.
- Efficient and Affordable Technologies – With Social Networks being free and website platforms like WordPress and Squarespace coming along, churches have been able to access powerful and scalable technologies at minimal cost.
- Pastors Willing to Adjust – I know this doesn’t sound like pastors historically, but when it comes to these new web technologies it seems that pastors are more and more willing to embrace and adjust.As more leaders are stepping up to lead the way and more technologies are becoming readily available, I believe these opportunities will continue to grow exponentially as pastors are willing to adapt and adjust. In the coming years we will see Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Artificial Intelligence become a part of our everyday lives and it will be interesting to see how church leaders continue to embrace these developing technologies.
Let’s take a moment to celebrate how far we have come together in embracing new technologies to further the mission of the church. Let’s not stop here though, we must press forward as our mission is great and the opportunities to accomplish this mission through emerging technologies is only growing!
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