Theology Technology

For almost all of my adult life, portable computing technology has been a part of my spiritual life.  No matter how small a role, it's always been a benefit to me somehow.  In everything from jotting notes, recording Bible studies, writing down scripture references to look up later, taking down ideas for topics to study on, and even just devotions and Bible reading.  It's always been something that I've used more and more over the years to help myself grow spiritually.

I started out the way everyone normally does, taking notes with a pen and pad every Sunday, but found that my notes would always get lost, or become difficult to organize.  (And even lost a ton of them along with my main Bible when my car was "unexpectedly towed" *blush*).  Ultimately, I'd get too frustrated with either looking for the darned things or trying to figure out which hand drawn outline went with what note and what order they went in according to the topical series being taught on.  PDA's saved my note taking life!

So years later, I've evolved from taking notes on a monochrome Palm Vx to a miniature laptop like Redfly paired to my AT&T Tilt.  The thing I have started to notice lately, however, is how much notice I've been getting.  As my function and mobile computing ability has developed, the devices I use have gotten a little bigger, and so it goes. 

While reading a discussion on another message board about my review of the Redfly, one of the participants in the discussion mentioned that he didn't think that laptops or PDAs had a place in God's house on the Sabbath.  This got me thinking.

Obviously I don't see anything as a problem with using technology in church, but I can see an argument for those that do.  There are definitely pros and cons to using devices like the Redfly.  Easy access and storage, the ability to backup notes to more than one device, and sharing with family and friends, are great benefits, but there are also drawbacks.  I experienced one such drawback not too long ago.

As the sermon was starting up, so was I, then discovered that a recent change I made to the OS had broken the software I normally use to take notes.  So for the first 5 to 10 minutes of the sermon I was troubleshooting to correct the issue.  I learned my lesson since then and haven't had any problems since.  I've also noticed that another guy I fellowship with started bringing in his 17-inch laptop to take notes as well, which is much more noticeable than my 9 inch Redfly.

With all the resources available to us online, technology is a natural progression to how things can be done in the church.  Think about it, we've gone from displaying lyrics to music on overhead projectors to laptops and projectors,  announcements are now done with accompanying Powerpoint presentations, entire church services are broadcast on TV and the internet and even the Bible is available freely in just about every translation known to man with a few clicks of the mouse.

This started me to thinking about how churches are currently using technology.  Recently John MacArthur released his entire sermon library on-line, the ESV study Bible comes with a key that unlocks an online version that comes complete with with commentary, my church offers the sermon outline and the mp3 of the weeks sermon free of charge weekly. 

The change is undeniable and even expected, the Church is already using technology to make the gospel more widely available. With more powerful portable devices becoming more and more available and the prices becoming more accessible, isn't it about time for Congregation 2.0?