Houses of Worship Embrace New Ways to Communicate
VIRGINIA BEACH — At Spring Branch Community Church, there’s no frenzied flipping through hymnals and no whispers of, “Which Bible verse did he say to turn to?”
Folks who want to sing along simply refer to the lyrics flowing across the giant screens in front of them. A PowerPoint presentation outlines the major points of Pastor Michael Simone’s sermon, and he keeps the audience’s attention by peppering slides with video clips, sound effects and illustrative examples from popular magazines.
Few people take notes in the Virginia Beach church; they can just get a copy of the PowerPoint presentation or pick up a CD of the entire sermon. If they didn’t have time to read the e-newsletter, they can check out the announcements that scroll across the big screens before the service starts.
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Some folks even leave their checkbooks at home, secure in the knowledge that their tithe has already been taken care of through an automated deduction from their checking accounts.
“We’re in the communication business,” said Simone, whose church has about 40 people working each Sunday to technologically produce the service. “I have to communicate this great message of God’s love, but how can I do that if I can’t keep people’s attention?
“That’s the power of technology – it keeps people focused and moves them along with you.” There is a saying that religion is big business, and in the 21st century it is clear individual churches are adopting many of the techniques that corporations employ to become more immediate and efficient.
The message that most houses of worship try to communicate hasn’t changed in centuries, but the mode of delivery has seen major evolution, particularly in the past decade. Once little more than plain buildings marked by religious symbols, today’s prayer houses look more like conference centers with state-of-the-art equipment.
More than 60 percent of churches owned a video projection system in 2001, almost four times as many as did in 1991, according to Your Church magazine. About 40 percent of churches used video during weekly services.
As the nation becomes increasingly Internet savvy, Web sites for houses of worship have followed suit, posting sermons and religious guidance and even allowing for electronic prayer requests. And people appear to be responding.
A 2004 Pew Internet & American Life Project report found 64 percent of the nation’s Internet users have used the Web for religious or spiritual matters. Nearly 20 percent have looked for information about where they could attend religious services, and another 7 percent had made or responded to an online prayer request.
At Spring Branch, Cape Story resident Julie Harshaw was taken aback by the bells and whistles when she first visited a year ago with her husband Chip and their two sons. She was more used to traditional church settings, but Harshaw now finds the technology helpful, both during and after services.
“It makes things a little more visually interesting,” said Harshaw, whose family belongs to the church. “It holds your attention a little longer, especially for people who, in this day and age, need to have their senses stimulated more often in order to stay engaged.”
Harshaw has also noticed that the services are able to keep her normally energetic 7 ½ year-old son focused.
“It’s usually really tough for him to sit still,” Harshaw said. “But when he comes with us to service, he sits there fairly quietly throughout the service.”
In Dallas, The Potter’s House, led by dynamic TV evangelist Bishop T.D. Jakes, features 26-foot screens, handheld computers to input new member information and prayer requests, and 200 power and data terminals to allow parishioners to download notes and PowerPoint presentations to laptops.
Completed in 2000, the $32 million house of worship even has a language center that can translate and transmit six different languages to wireless headsets for its 28,000 parishioners.
Closer to home, Calvary Revival Church in Norfolk isn’t quite as mammoth. But with 7,500 members and nearly 200 employees at its church, school, bookstore and ministry divisions, ignoring technology is not really an option.
“IT and church don’t really go together in your head,” said information systems director Judy Watson. “But we’re no different than a corporate office. Our product is salvation.”
In addition to televising its services internationally, Calvary has hundreds of volunteers to track, four Web sites to maintain, and thousands of tithes and donations each week that must be sorted and entered into a secure database so that contributors can get tax receipts.
The church’s corporate offices and its divisions have so many computers that the church has its own tech help desk. While many churches rely on the time and expertise of its members when encountering tech trouble, Calvary has developed a partnership with Virgil Computers in Norfolk to provide those types of services.
“IT can carry a very high price ticket as far as personnel and equipment, especially with a church that doesn’t have a large IT budget,” said Watson, who has about $100,000 this year for her department. “But as a church, you don’t have to know everything. You just have to make sure you’re connecting with organizations who want to assist you in getting the gospel out.”
The church’s technological sophistication allowed it to welcome thousands for a praise, worship and arts conference that wraps up today . The same technology that displays church announcements, song lyrics and the pastor’s sermon gives attendees the opportunity to learn ways to enhance their own church services.
“Everyone has different ways in which they communicate,” Watson said. “Some are visual; some are oral. Technology allows you to communicate across of the different spectrums of how people learn.”
The sermons, which are televised internationally, are available on four different media – CDs, DVDs and audio and video cassettes. A point-of-sale system allows the church to essentially set up its Christian bookstore at any event.
Calvary’s physical, Internet and call-center presences complement one another 24-7. At the call center, which received 16,000 calls during the past 12 months, an electronic telephone system routes calls to Calvary’s Revive Line, which offers counseling and prayer. Or people can find materials on its Web site and submit e-prayer requests.
“We’ve had lots of people call the prayer line and tell us that they just happened upon our site and prayed the prayer of salvation,” Watson said. “They want to know what’s next.”
But not all technology is welcome at Calvary.
Bishop B. Courtney McBath, the founding pastor of the church, has a semi-serious rule about cell phones: Forget to mute it, and you owe the whole congregation pizza.
“Uh-oh,” he joked last Sunday as an electronic tune wafted through the church. “We’re not mad at you. We want pepperoni.”
The growing use of technology in churches is not without some controversy. It’s important to distinguish between using high-tech equipment to simply attract members and using it as a tool to communicate church doctrine, said Michael Schreiter, managing editor of Your Church magazine, a Christianity Today publication.
“There’s a whole new group of young kids out there whose parents never took them to church, and they get very uncomfortable in a traditional setting,” Schreiter said. “There’s a sense that if you want to reach out to the previously unchurched, you need to present video technology and a state-of-the-art music system or you lose their attention.”
That’s exactly what Pastor Simone’s mission is at Spring Branch: to reach those who feel awkward walking into a traditional church.
That’s why he takes such pains to make sure the Web site is regularly updated with sermon, ministry and contact information so visitors can get a good feel for what the church is like before they ever set foot inside. He puts as much background information as possible into his audio-visual presentations during services so newcomers can keep up.
“You can’t expect most people to be able to turn to Obadiah in the Bible,” Simone said. “Obi-Wan Kenobi, they know, but not Obadiah. You can either make people feel guilty about it, or make it easy by putting it on the screen.”
Simone never would’ve dreamed that e-mail would become such an integral part of communicating with his congregation. He gets hundreds each week, everything from dinner invites to theological questions.
“It’s sort of a gentle, non-threatening way of walking into my office without actually having to walk in,” said Simone, whose staff uses cell phones as their main means of communication.
But Simone notes that there’s one thing that technology still can’t do – inspire his sermons and teachings.
“That’s something that happens personally and privately,” Simone said. “But God’s really good at downloading the Holy Spirit. It’s been his program for years.”
