Digital World - Analogue Church: Rebalancing Technology in Corporate Worship
Snelling, MR David M.
Synopsis "Digital World - Analogue Church: Rebalancing Technology in Corporate Worship"
'What if, in this digital world, the future of the church is analogue?' In today's fast-moving, technological world, 'Digital World - Analogue Church' seeks to explore what we mean by the term 'technology', reveals its role in the production and performance of music, and seeks to find its proper place within the corporate worship life of the church. This is a book that challenges churches to examine the place of technology within the context of their Sunday services. It begins with an examination of what constitutes technology, drawing on diverse sources from Plato to Jacques Ellul, George Ritzer and Marshall McLuhan. Focussing particularly on Ritzer's 'McDonaldization' and McLuhan's 'Medium is the Message, ' theories, 'Digital World - Analogue Church' discusses technology's role in the increasing homogenization and commodification of music at the apparent expense of artistic quality. Powerful commercial forces have reduced the music that churches use to a diet of 'upbeat, relentlessly cheerful or sentimentally devotional music that fails to speak to the realities of Christian life.' Many churches fail to understand the consequences of adopting technological devices and systems that are capable of changing their culture. 'Digital World - Analogue Church' does not seek a uniform solution to issues of technology in corporate worship. Neither is it a polemic against all things electronic. It seeks to raise awareness of the power of technology and how it has changed our corporate worship. It proposes that such awareness allows churches to take steps to redress the balance and to mitigate technology's negative effects. In taking action to limit technology's homogenizing, commodifying and individualizing tendencies, churches will find themselves enabled to grow deeper relationships, encourage genuine creativity and a more balanced use of technology in corporate worship. This permits churches to remain culturally relevant while at the same time allowing them to offer something that does not merely reflect the spirit of the age.
