How Technology Can Help Your Church

Honestly, I do not understand why most churches, pastors, and church leaders do not leverage technology for the Glory of God. Pastors, church leaders, and faithful church attendees who see social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as evil are missing a great opportunity to reach people far from God.

Are you sitting?

Here’s something that’ll blow your mind…

Christianity was, in a very real sense, the first technologically driven religion.

Intrigued? Angry? Frustrated? 

Galilee, Bethlehem and the rest of Palestine were part of a Roman world whose technological underpinnings had reached a level by Jesus’ day that was not to be surpassed until the 19th Century.  Those roads that The Apostle Paul and his associates traveled to spread the faith were unprecedented marvels of engineering. Without the ingeniously constructed roads that led from the streets where Jesus had walked to the cities of Syria and Greece, Christianity might have remained another obscure Judean sect like those that fill the pages in accounts by Jewish historian Josephus.

The roads were technological marvels – the ORIGINAL information super-highway!

What’s The Point?

If Jesus, His Disciples, or The Apostle Paul were here today, they’d all use Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites to reach people for God!  I can imagine The Apostle Paul with his MacBook Air updating his Facebook status with these words:

¹⁹ Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. ²⁰ To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. ²¹ To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. ²² To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. ²³ I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. (NIV)

At Mars Hill, we decided to leverage technology for the glory of God. Why?  More people prefer to have information pushed to them as opposed to having to go looking for it. Twitter and Facebook can be used to push information to users. This saves people the effort of going to a web site and looking for the information they need.

Moreover, Twitter forces brevity with its 140 character limit. Churches can get out a short message with a link to a registration form or web page if additional information in necessary. The benefit is that people don’t need to spend a lot of time wading through information that does not pertain to them.

  Pastors, if you’re not using Facebook, Twitter or any other form of social media, you’re missing a God-sized & ordained opportunity reach people for God.

 How do you feel about churches using technology?