They are Gen-Z Black South Africans, highly educated, raised in typical “Christian homes,” but now flipping the script. Via aggressive use of Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, they’re re-inventing themselves as entrepreneurial “Afro-spiritualist” healers, fortune readers or dream interpreters. It’s all…
YHWH vs. the Singularity
In a recent issue of The Atlantic, novelist and playwright Ayad Akhtar argues that we have now arrived in the age of the Singularity, the hypothetical point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in never-before-foreseeable…
My phone and I need to talk
I have begun to suspect that some of what I read is not even true. I tell myself that I am checking the news, but it is not always new or important. I read news that is not quite news…
Baylor prof leads innovative team working to disrupt human trafficking
Criminal justice experts and academics, including a Baylor University professor, are teaming up to provide a technological edge to the law enforcement battle against human trafficking. Stacie Petter, professor of information systems and business analytics at Baylor, is part of…
Embracing technology prepared us in advance for COVID-19
During this pandemic, churches, schools and organizations have been forced to learn and use new approaches to worship, ministry and learning. We are creatures of habit, but habits can limit our perspective. As Baptist Seminary of Kentucky began offering theological…
Cyborg discipleship: boundary-crossing through COVID-19 and beyond
While we wait to gather again physically, we can ask: How are we experiencing the Spirit’s movement in our cyberspaces of worship, inviting us to cross boundaries between human, machine, more-than-human, the physical and the non-physical?
Now what? Some thoughts about what’s next for the scattered and gathered church
Like retailers, universities and hospitals, churches will be having conversations around this question: Are buildings a necessity for delivering our services and ministries? In our new normal, physical location may be only one of many expressions of church.
Zoom church is helpful for now. But we cannot become satisfied with technology’s quasi-ability to facilitate communion
Thrust into the wilderness of this global pandemic, we must not succumb to the temptation to turn stones into bread. We should not allow virtual church to become more desirable – more permanent – than the miracle of a physically gathered community.
Are your streamed worship services or sermons technologically unsophisticated? GOOD | #intimeslikethese
Not only is it okay for your church to be terrible at video production; in my view, it may be preferable. Don’t assume you have to embrace digital media in order to be “relevant.”