Putting the digital into worship

I can never predict when I will have a ‘think digital first’ moment. Today, it happened again in church while singing a hymn. You might think it had something to do with music and digital accompaniment, but that wasn’t it.

Our closing hymn was the nineteenth century’s “Jesus Saviour, Pilot Me.” The words evoke the symbolism of the nautical pilot who has responsibility for navigating a ship into safe harbour. While on a cruise, I watched as the pilot boat came alongside the cruise ship, matched speed and then the pilot leapt onboard, made his way to the bridge and safely guided the ship into port.

Today in church a teenage boy sat in front of me mumbling the lyrics to the hymn. As I watched him, I wondered what he knew of Jesus being described as a pilot. In all likelihood a pilot for him is someone operating an aircraft. And certainly at 35,000 feet it’s no big deal for a pilot to keep a plane safe over a "tempestuous sea.”

Sure enough, when asked after the service, he had no idea what the whole pilot thing was about. And I wonder how many others who sing that hymn have a similar dissociation. Maybe if you read some Mark Twain in school and knew about the pilots maneuvering the boats and barges up and down the Mississippi you would have some notion. But that’s asking a lot from memory.

Our artistic expressions of faith are more likely to involve fields and streams, than factories, parking lots and computers. Most of this is no doubt because our Lord made many references to plants, farming, fishing and harvesting. Some may argue that these represent the ‘natural’ world whereas computers and machines are the result of man’s creation. However, humankind learned how to farm. History tells us that. And there are lots of simple machines used in fishing and agriculture. So that argument may not hold water.

The ‘think digital first’ question is: How does the church, in its preaching and teaching through both hymns and spoken word relate to our 21st century reality?

Is not baptism comparable to reformatting a hard drive. Everything old is wiped away, all is made new and clean?

Isn’t sin like a virus in your operating system, corrupting data?

And rather than a nautical pilot who knows the way, isn’t Jesus rather like a GPS, guiding us?

Prayer is a tweet to our Father in heaven. And we are assured He is following us!

I’m not trying to be sacrilegious or flippant. If we are going to relate our faith to a digital generation, we need to update our vocabulary.

Anyone care to write a hymn in a ‘think digital first’ mode?

iPhone goes iNspirational

Some churches have broadcast their services on television for years. Now the trend is heading to streaming video for the mobile crowd. Check out this story http://cultofmac.com/

Know where you are going

Soon after Twitter became popular, one of Canada’s major corporations started sending out tweets. We ‘followed’ each other and then, after a couple of months the tweets stopped.

They resumed in June. I was curious about why they stopped, so I tweeted the question. The communications person responsible sent me an e-mail explaining that an enthusiastic employee had started tweeting before the organization was ready to do so. When the employee left, the tweets stopped.

Since then the company did “some serious thinking about social media.” It was a communication tool they wanted to use, but no one had sat down and figured out its use strategically.

When the tweets resumed you knew immediately they we part of an overall plan.
They are more focused and reflect good communication strategy and follower involvement.

The lesson? Don’t get into social media until you know what you want to do. Ask the ‘why’ question; work out the strategic direction; and decide what you want to accomplish.

I’m sure this company isn’t the only organization to retreat from social media and then re-enter when it’s answered the fundamental questions and mapped out its strategy. People get excited about the potential of social media and tweet first, ask questions later!