This was an awesome session moderated by Scott McClellan of Collide Magazine and featured Conway Edwards (CE), Cynthia Ware (CW), Scott Hodge (SH), Carlos Whittaker (LS), and Bobby Gruenewald (BG).
Does the church leadership conversation focus too much on innovation, just enough, etc?
CW: We’re not focusing enough on it because our culture is changing so dramatically and rapidly. People aren’t aware that the first-time visitors to church come to their websites. People consider hiring a great lead pastor, worship pastor, etc and not invest in their website and staffing in areas of media and technology. By using technology doesn’t mean using it for the cool factor, it means, evaluating where culture lives and what part we can and are called to redeem. If we can be were people are and use technology to drive forward the Kingdom, we need to.
LW: We need to be careful, as the Church, to not innovate for the sake of innovating. What’s the purpose and role of the local church in your community? And how can you innovate with that goal in mind Churches get ahead of themselves when they try to innovate for the sake of innovation.
BG: Collectively, the Church doesn’t understand or focus on it at all. There’s examples of churches that lose sight and think that how you use technology replaces why you do things. Technology is a tool. The “why” behind it is not to use technology, we use technology to build the church. We don’t understand how to live in a culture of change. It’s easy to create a change but difficult to have a culture of change. People need to anticipate change. People need to learn to lean into change.
What are your sources of inspiration for creativity, innovation, connection, etc?
CE: Mark Driscoll at Mars Hill through The City; Andy Stanley, and John Piper.
CW: For tech and media, she gravitates towards people who are asking deeper questions. Carefully weighing what we’re doing it, why we’re doing it, and where’s the Scripture to back it. (Ill: John Piper vs Twitter). There’s a lot of polarization between pro and anti tech people. Beyond that, she believes we’re just beginning to see the earliest iterations of what online community will look like. She looks to people like John Dyer and Shane Hipps. We need to find our theological underpinnings to make sure what we’re standing on is what we should be standing on.
BG: In terms of online church, there’s a book called SimChurch that pulls together thoughts and questions about online church. A guy in France named Eric… who runs evangelistic websites that are specialized to different cultural website. Have seen over 1.2 million people come to Christ through their websites. The thing he personally learns the most from is understanding why people use technology.
LW: Leaving the church world and diving into the coaching world, he’s inspired by the churches that people don’t know about that are doing things that are out of the box. (Ill: Shawn King and Courageous Church in Atlanta built via Facebook.)
SH: We have a tendency to look up, churches that are further ahead than we are. He’s looking at churches that are just starting that are taking risks and making quicker decisions than larger churches can. People like Shawn King, Pete Wilson and Carlos Whittaker, Dave Gibbons, etc.
Are there any current media tools trends that get you excited?
SH: Most excited about leadership and tools like Twitter that enable access to people you didn’t have access to before. And tools that allow for people to create influence and learning. Also, through using Jarbyco, people are enabled to ask questions they would never ask. They’re getting questions people would never ask and are also able to see what their people care about.
LW: With the transition from church work to coaching, video chat is enabling face-to-face connections. It’s changing the way you can pour into leaders.
BG: Most excited about Carlos’ coaching network. Hehe. Running GoogleAdWords that are intersecting what people are searching for (porn, etc) and redirect them to their online church services. (Ill: Looking for Naked Ladies? Try church online instead.)
CW: LifeChurch.tv’s innovative tools… YouVersion.com, ChurchMetrics.com, church online, etc. And Jarybco… the ability to text and maintain connection with their congregation.
CE: Doing coffee and conversation, and allowing people the opportunity to ask at least five questions during the process of the message.
SH: Interesting that all of the things mentioned are not about broadcast, but about conversation and engaging people in conversation. It’s all about interaction.
How do you create a culture of change?
SH: We’re an 85 year old church and we are the story of that change. The change we needed was a cultural change… not a change of music, style, etc… it was a change of their DNA. There’s a difference between transition and change. Change typically has to do with the outer things we’d change (music, style, etc) – transition has to do with people’s hearts (how they think, what they feel, what they believe). Churches have a real challenge with change. But if you think about who God is, He’s unchanging, but He’s all about changing us. It’s a journey. We tend to not talk about change and wonder why people are inflexible towards change. God is constantly changing us. We want to be able to continually morph and change and make that culture of change a part of who we are.
LW: In Andy Stanley’s talk “Don’t Be That Couch” he talks about the “ugly couch” everyone hangs onto… for whatever reason. But sometimes we need to get rid of our ugly couches and replace them with something new. That marked a change from doing KidStuff once a week to once a month at NorthPoint.
CE: We must always be ready for change. We mustn’t hold on to things too tightly.
Complete this sentence. I like it to see when churches use media/technology to ____________.
CE: Drive home a spiritual truth.
SH: help reshape people’s perception of the Church and Christianity. We have a perception problem. The world’s problem isn’t so much with Jesus, but it’s with Christians and Christianity. We need to be wise with how we use technology… like Christian television… we can take it in the wrong direction. Or, we can be intentional about how we use it to celebrate and tell stories.
LW: create followers of Christ who weren’t followers of Christ. (Ill: LifeChurch.tv’s online campus’ “click the button if you’ve accepted Christ.”)
Evangelism on the internet; can it happen, how?
BG: It does happen. So it can happen. How is through all sorts of means… through the places we intersect with people online. Sometimes we overlook the most basic elements… it’s not about significant technology or websites, it starts with you. One of the most significant touch points they have online is their online prayer feature. It’s a one-on-one convo with someone on their team or volunteers. Prayer transcends space and culture, it has no barriers. What’s interesting about the web is that a lot of the criticism of it is the anonymity it creates, but the reality is that all of us walk around with emotional facades all day. Sometimes when the physical facade is removed it makes space for real, deep conversation.
LW: Asked people on his blog what church they go to, and someone responded “this is my church.”
Where do you draw the line on spending for tech excellence vs going towards others missions?
CE: It’s mission vs machine. When you look at a tech issue, is is going towards the mission of your church or the mission of the machine? Work towards the mission… reaching people for Christ. If the technology facilitates the mission, go for it. If it’s majoring on excellence to please people in the room, don’t.
SH: Hopefully they both try to accomplish to reach others. Technology gives us an amazing tool to let people know what’s going on in the world around us. One of the biggest issues the church faces is ignorance. We need to help our people become more aware… awareness leads to us becoming agitated… and when we’re agitated, we’ll be moved to action.
BG: Answer will be different for everyone. It depends on what God has called your church to uniquely do. The answer lies in your calling… who are you called to be and called to reach? You have to make a choice of where you are going to land on the curve of quality and cost.
CW: There’s the hardware, technology in the room, the software, etc. Online technology is different. Many online services are free. So is Facebook. So is Twitter. Video streaming. Their are applications galore that people in our congregation have access to. The largest mission field in the world is online.
How do we leverage skills/ideas in other churches to connect us and minimize the duplication of effort?
LW: Churches have to get beyond competition and we’ve got to learn to share.
CW: The web makes collaboration simple and makes connection possible. It’s sometimes easier to connect with a pastor online than in person.
BG: VideoTeaching.com is an example they’ve developed… mainly formed out of relationships they’ve established with different pastors and church leaders. Sharing relationships is a way we can help other churches. We need to learn to leverage the relationships we have.
SH: It comes down to intentionality of sharing an idea that worked.
What are some things that any church of any shape or size could use to leverage technology?
LW: There’s a 16 year old kid in your church that knows more about technology than all of your church staff. Find them and get them plugged in and involved.
CE: From the beginning they’ve had a young intern from Dallas Seminary and have now decided they need to technology pastor to explore the intersection of technology, media and theology.
BG: The emerging generation are late adopters of technology.
SH: So much of it is already developed… we just need to learn how to leverage it.
CW: Pull other people into your dialogue. Sometimes your most obvious errors are not apparent to you.
Is the role of technology in church services changing?
LW: One church in Phoenix is going to move from teaching via preaching to story telling through video.
SM: One of the least interactive times of people’s week could be when they sit in a church service.
CW: The interaction we need to create in our church services needs to be interaction between the people and God. The connection and interaction needs to lead them towards Christ.
