technology at churches

The Barna Group recently released a new study about the use of technology in Protestant churches nationwide.
New Research Describes Use of Technology in Churches
In general, in the past two years adoption of technology into churches has been a little slow.

Those tools included in the study were large screens used for showing video imagery; showing movie clips and other video segments during church events; sending email blasts to all or portions of the congregation; operating a church website; offering a blog site or pages for interaction with church leaders; maintaining a page on behalf of the church on one or more social networking sites; providing podcasts for people to listen to; and receiving programming and training via a satellite dish.

In the past few years at my church, we have started our own church website. We have a large television but not a large screen. In the youth ministry we show clips from movies, and we send out youth group email blasts. The website has sermons that are also edited for podcasting but we do not put on a specific podcast. As a whole, our church is not involved in social network, but the youth ministry uses existing social networks to connect with students. We are not large enough to do satellite training, but our members do go to larger churches occasionally to get such training.


There is a lot of intersting research from the Barna group, I encourage you to check it out and see the reasons why some churches are embracing and why some churches are holding back.