This weekend I went down to my friends church and got to lead the worship part of the service which was really fun. After church, I hung out with what they have dubbed themselves, “The Worship Imagination Team.” The goal is to visit churchs that are doing new and innnovative things, filtering through the ideas, and implementing in their own church.
All that to say, we went to a big church this weekend. I wont say the name but it was huge, trendy, and everyone was gorgeous and well dressed. Inside the church there was stadium seating, with Samsung flat panels mounted underneath the balcony for those sitting in the back on the lower level. The stage was big enough for a 5v5 game of basketball, and all this was just the sanctuary. Next to it was a facility that housed the youth programs of equal size.
In the service we experienced a spoken word poet, a band (Keys, electric, acoustic, drums, and bass), and a few other interactive experiences. Overall, it was a really well put together service. The speaker was engaging and easy to listen to even though he didnt use one powerpoint slide. I actually heard and remember the whole message.
So why Church 2.0. Simply said, it seems that churches growing at the fastest rate are similar to companies engaging in Web 2.0. They use blogs, twitter, facebook, myspace, flickr, podcasts, vlog, video casts, live streaming, and just about everything else out there as far as interactive media is concerned. No one wants the web anymore, but rather they want the stuff that engages them in the web (how often do you change your facebook status?). It almost looks like the same pandemic is heading to churches. People don’t necessarily want sing, sermon, sing anymore.
Is this ok? What is worth holding onto in traditional services? If people wouldn’t go to church because it refused to adapt to culture would you change? Should the church adapt to culture?
So many questions…
dustin reynolds 