Amitabh Singh's Blog, page 2

Church in 2030: What will it be like?

Last week we looked at “Church in 1880: What was it like?” The blog provides an interesting timeline that covers the gasoline engine, railways, telegraphs and telephones, the lightbulb, typesetting and printing, radios, and photographic film. Today we look at computers, the sinternet, website, and what has changed in the last 20 plus years.

Personal Computers: IBM Got It Wrong & Then Got It Right
1949 to 1955 – Electrical Apparatus Company (GE in USA, the British GE, Siemens in Germany, Philips in Holland) went into computers.
In 1965 – Researchers hooked up a computer at MIT with US Air Force computers in California. For the first time two computers communicated.
In 1971 – Ray Tomlinson wrote the first program that sent the first ARPAnet e-mail between two computers.
In 1976 – Microchips were invented. IBM market research was wrong. IBM thought that this would not happen. Everything they were certain of was disrupted. They had to reorganize themselves.
In 1980 – IBM produced its own personal computer.
In 1983 – IBM became the leading personal computer producer.

Internet:
In 1973 -US computer scientist Vint Cerf invented the TCP/IP protocol that rules them all.
In 1974 – The term “internet” was first used by a US computer scientist Vint Cerf.
In 1982 – David Nicholas, Mike Kazar, Ivor Durham, and John Zarnay, students at Carnegie Mellon University constructed the first internet application for the building’s Coke vending machine.

Website:
In 1989 – Sir Timothy Tim Berners-Lee, a British developer is credited as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He came up with the idea of “Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)” to access and retrieve information across the internet.
August 6, 1991 – The first web page on the internet was built at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research).
August 1991 – 18,957 websites online.
August 1996 – 342,081 websites online.

What changed in the last 20 plus years?

2000:
TripAdvisor, an American online travel company was formed.
Just half of Americans had broadband in their home. Today, more than 90 per cent have it.
Manufacturers began to adapt Bluetooth for use in computer and mobile phones.
Flash Drives first sold by IBM in 2000 that allowed large storage capacity for files, photos, or videos.

2001:
Wikipedia started publishing articles online.
Apple sold its first iPod.

2002:
LinkedIn became an online networking platform.
Xbox live allowed gamers to play each other online.

2003:
iTunes launched online access to music.
Skype launched in August 2003 transforming the way people communicated across borders.

2004:
Social media did not exist.
Facebook was first developed.

2005:
Google Maps in February 2005.
YouTube was launched in May 2005.

2006:
Twitter came on the scene.

2007:
Apple released the iPhone, the first touchscreen smartphone with mass-market appeal, in June 2007.
Netflix enabled viewers to watch movies and television programs on demand via a monthly paid subscription.
Amazon Kindle was released in November 2007.

2008:
Airbnb became a cost-effective option for travellers and encouraged homeowners to rent out properties to boost tourism.
Dropbox allowed people to store digital files and documents in online folders.

2009:
Uber enabled drivers to use their own vehicles as a cost-effective alternative to taxis.
WhatsApp allowed people to communicate via text messages or phone calls for free, without the need of a cell phone plan.
Google self-driving project started.

2010:
iPads were introduced as a cheaper, smaller, more mobile option to access online technology.
Instagram allowed people to share and comment photos posted online.

2011:
Siri became the new search tool on iPhones.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) became real as IBM’s Watson and Salesforce’s Einstein were developed as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools.

2012:
Google released Google Now for their Android System.
August 2012 – Google announced that its automated vehicles had completed over 300,000 miles of driving, accident free.
The biggest player in Virtual Reality (VR) space, Oculus (a division of Facebook) introduced its first product – a VR.

2013:
The first VR headset called the Oculus Rift was introduced. The company has since launched a number of headsets with gaming as one of its biggest applications.

2013 & 2014:
Microsoft and Amazon followed suit with virtual reality products, and then came Cortana.
Voice recognition technology moved far beyond the smartphone.

2014:
Voice-enabled Alexa AI was available in stores.
Peloton, a stationary bike with a built-in screen allowed people to access live and on-demand workout classes.

2015:
Klaus Schwab introduced the concept of the Fourth Industrial revolution.
Starbucks launched mobile ordering at all US locations.
By November 2015, Uber was valued at $70 billion USD and had spread to over 250 cities worldwide.
In November and December 2015, two private companies, Blue Origin and SpaceX, successfully landed reusable rockets. This drastically reduced the cost of space exploration and brought commercial space travel one step closer to reality.

2016:
Klaus’s book, “The Fourth Industrial Revolution” was released.
McDonalds rolled out its mobile ordering app and kiosks.
Apple introduced Air Pods, the first in-ear wireless headphones that can be paired with Apple devices via bluetooth technology.

2017:
Atom Bank became the most preferred bank in UK. It was a mobile only app without any brick-and-mortal location or tellers.

2018:
Facebook had more than 2.26 billion users.

2019:
Lumi by Pampers (wearable tech for babies) became an all-in-one size baby monitoring system that works via a sensor on a baby diaper.

2020:
4.2 billion people are already connected online. 3.4 billion people publicly shared their personal information with the world.

2022:
Facebook changed its name to Metaverse.
During Google’s I/O Developer Summit, Google CEO Sundar Pichai showed a video demo of a pair of glasses that showed live translations in real time to the person wearing them.

Digital and physical has merged. For the first time, small and medium size churches will be spending more on digital solutions than traditional ones.

Discussions have moved from ROI (Return on Investment) to ROR (Return on Relationship).

No one can really predict what the church will be like in 2030. However, take a picture of all the devices you use. They will all be slower and look uglier in just the next eight years. A tsunami of change is waiting for us. The next five years of artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR) is about to rock our world.

Reflection: What is the impact of this technology on the future of online ministry and evangelism in a Phygital (merging of physical and digital) church?

Church in 1880: What was it like?

The printing press had grown in popularity in North America by the 1880s. At that time, we still had no computers, fax machines, cars, radios, televisions, copy machines, aeroplanes, air conditioning, or the internet. For Church Administrators, there was no email marketing, Church Relationship Management (CRM), websites or Church Apps.

Here is an interesting timeline of technological advancements since 1680:

Steam Engine & Gasoline Engine:
In 1680 – French physicist, Denis Papin, was the forerunner of the pressure cooker and the steam engine.
Mid-1880s – The gasoline engine, designed to power the first automobiles, was built by Karl Benz and Gottfriend Daimler.

Railways:
In 1830 – Trains ran at just 30 mph. George Stephenson’s “Rocket” pulled the first train on a commercial railroad which started the railroad boom.
In 1840 – Almost 3,000 miles of railway tracks were laid across America.
In 1845 – There were over a hundred railroad companies in America.
In 1846 – Pennsylvania Railroads was formed by the state legislature.
In 1850 – Only four to six railroad companies remained in America.

Telegraph & Telephone:
In 1842 – Samuel Morse demonstrated a working telegraph between two committee rooms in Washington DC.
When Congress voted in favor of investing $30,000 USD for an experimental telegraph line between Washington DC and Baltimore, 83 voted against it. Whereas, 70 did not vote, “to avoid the responsibility of spending the public money for a machine they did not understand.”
In 1852 – The New York Times article described the telegraph network as “the highway of thought.” 
In 1877 – Inventors Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell battled for the patent of new technology – the telephone. 

Lightbulb:
1860 to 1865 – Every electric inventor began to work on what eventually became the lightbulb.
1879 – Edison waited for ten years, and then concentrated for a couple of years to deliver on this opportunity.

Typesetting & Printing:
In 1851 – The first issue of what later became The New York Times was published.
In 1858 – George Phones Gordon produced the Franklin Press that uses a foot pedal against the flat inked printing plate.
In 1886 – Ottmar Mergenthaler designed the Linotype for typesetting. Mergenthaler introduced a keyboard mechanism to assemble the letters and adjust them in a line. Despite resistance from the old craftsmen-typesetters, it became the “standard” by 1890. 

Audio over Power Lines & Free Commercial Radio:
In 1920 – Radio broadcasting began with the broadcast of KDKA in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.
In 1922 – Retired Major General George O. Squier patented the technology for piping audio over power lines.
In 1934 – The North American Company, under the umbrella of ‘Muzak’ started piping music into Cleveland homes. The Advent of free commercial radio was the end of Muzak’s market. 

Photographic Film to Smartphone Camera:
1860s – Every bride wanted her photograph taken. In those days, photography required a heavy camera and an elaborate setting before the photos were taken.
Mid-1880s – George Eastman replaced the heavy glass plates with cellulose film.
1892 – The Eastman Kodak Company was founded. Within ten years, Eastman Kodak was the leader in photography.
In 1976 – Kodak enjoyed 89 per cent of market share in the United States, with photographic film products and the modern camera.
In 2013 – “Everyday, more photos are taken with an iPhone than any other camera.” – Apple 

Next week, we will take a look at computers, the internet, websites, and what has changed in the last 20 plus years.

We are at the cusp of the 5th Industrial Revolution. The speed of change is not going to get any slower.

Four Church Models for Church 4.0

Church 1.0 was location-based. Church 2.0 was customer-centric. Church 3.0 was cause-based. Church 4.0 is moving from traditional to digital. It is the merging of the physical and digital.

Church 4.0 is not about a church building or a program. In Church 4.0, where amateur-curated video content is viewable on handheld devices, church leaders are trying to understand what it means to run four different churches. As a church leader, you have to be clear about how you want to run the following four churches:

Single Campus – Onsite ChurchMulti-campus – Onsite ChurchYouTube Event – Social Network ChurchFacebook or Google Church – Online Church

Church buildings stood empty in 2020. The COVID pandemic forced church leaders to be relevant, and think about how to attract online. The focus shifted from whether churches should utilize social media marketing, to developing social media strategies. Amid an abundance of opportunities, it has to come down to picking social channels that work best for you.

Social media covers blogs, images and video sharing, podcasting, and social media networks. Generation X, Y, and Z are using TikTok and Instagram. Boomers use Facebook. What social media platform is best for your church?

The words of Peter Drucker serve as a reminder as we try to create our strategic roadmap. He wrote:

“Anything too clever, whether in design or execution, is almost bound to fail. Don’t diversify, don’t splinter, don’t try to do too many things at once. Don’t try and innovate for the future. Innovate for the present.”

I share a word of caution for leaders: Your church should not be using too many social networks. It’s a mistake to do very little on social media. It’s an even bigger mistake to try to do too much on social media. Even if you are open to a social media mindset, the limitation in the skillset available to you should prompt you to have a realistic digital playbook.

By 2020, Elevation Church had sixteen full-time staff members managing social media and a full-time YouTube strategist. Your church may not have a skillset like Elevation Church, to manage your digital marketing strategy. It is a flawed strategy to copy Elevation Church if your team’s bandwidth is not close to theirs.

Between the four church models (single campus, multi-campus, social network church, and online church), Philip Kotler provides us with a timely reminder:

“Strategy is indeed about choosing what not to do as well as what to do. A business unit needs to decide what need it aims to satisfy in what group of people and with what value proposition that distinguishes the business from its competitors.”

Church leaders need to decide what platform offers the best optimization. Your process needs to work for you. Social ministry is an investment of time. The caveat is that you should avoid your social media presence becoming a personal time sink for you. The size of your church makes a difference to your digital playlist. One size does not fit all.

(Excerpts from my book, The New Normal of Leadership: Innovation & Technology in Church 4.0, Source:  https://amitabhsingh.com/books/ )

How Do We Optimize & Automate?

Church leaders will have to embrace continuous innovation. Leaders making strategic decisions that helps them to optimize and automate will lead effective churches. Let’s consider the metaphor of four levels of car that is available to us.

Level 1: Sedan – Standardization

The church is Pastoral-based. Pastors, Elders/Deacons, and volunteers are helping manage the workload.

Many of the process are manual. The need here is to get things standardized so that it becomes easier to manage.

A small Information Technology team, limited revenue, and reliance on manual processes make it challenging to be at the cutting edge. There is a reason why church documents are retained in banker’s boxes and stored in some dingy backrooms in most churches at this level. Smaller DIY (Do-It-Yourself) churches survive by pushing away the important for the urgent.

Level 2: Minivan – Optimization

The church is Platform-based but using low-end traditional Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

Platforms like Planning Center, ACS Technologies, Church Community Builder, Shelby, or Rock RMS are utilized. Processes are not entirely manual. Live dashboards are missing. Many of the reports that Pastors needs have to be created. What got a church to this point will not take this church any further. There is a need to streamline and automate processes, increase revenue, decrease cost, and manage risk better.

One of the realities during this phase is that many platforms are utilized to cover different things. These platforms are not at the cutting edge of automation and artificial intelligence (A.I.). These platforms do not talk to one another. CRM in a church at this level is not their system of records. Everyone is responsible, but no one is really responsible. Internal processes are fragmented, and at times disjointed.

Level 3: Hybrid – Automation

A church at this level is using a marketing platform. Church’s data is in silos. Different teams are using digital platforms and cannot easily share the data across systems and departments.

Social networks, OCR document scanning, and Learning Management System (LMS) are not integrated with your CRM. You rushed to pick up a Church App provider who offered you a community forum, you forgot how to discuss how will the Learning Management System and forum for online courses will integrate into a connected ecosystem.

You are better at posting your content than listening to the silent and anonymous digital lurkers. You are beginning to experience the main of many-to-many communication due to an increase in the use of social medial networks and messaging channels.

Introducing automation is creating the need to restructure human resources. Everyone knows something needs to be done. There is a lack of understanding of what is required.

Level 4: Electric – Innovation

Innovation leads the church to move from traditional to social Customer Relationship Management (CRM) as your system of record. The goal is to deliver the right experience, to the right people, at the right time. It can come only from integrated thinking and solution.

Multi-faceted platforms need to be a part of a connected ecosystem. Automation needs to eliminate manual processes and data entry. Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) needs to provide insights into visitor’s patterns, attendance routines, and offer personalized engagement. I have been working with Salesforce CRM since 2015. That is what makes me run.

Church leaders need to understand that right tools are needed to innovate and optimize. We crawl in Level 1 (Sedan), walk in Level 2 (Minivan), jog in Level 3 (Hybrid), and run in Level 4 (Electric).

(Excerpts from my book, The New Normal of Leadership: Innovation & Technology in Church 4.0, Source:  https://amitabhsingh.com/books/ )

 

The Thinker Or The Doer?

Leonardo da Vinci had great ideas. Submarines and helicopter designs are found sketched in his notebook. Yet history will not remember him when it comes to these advancements. Someone needs to run with the idea.

Why did the zipper find acceptance and displace buttons even though it tends to jam? It is simple. Someone ran with the idea of a zipper and created a change in perception.

In the 1950s, the company that had the first computer, Univac, knew that its machine was designed for scientific work. Univac’s market research had anticipated that by the year 2000, about one thousand computers would be sold – around twenty computers a year. They did not send a salesperson out when businesses showed interest in their computer.

IBM was willing to take orders from businesses and serve them. Around the 1960s, Univac had the most advanced and best machine. IBM had the computer market.

Between 1949 to 1955, electrical apparatus companies (GE in USA, the British GE, Siemens in Germany, Philips in Holand) joined the computer industry. By 1970, big companies were out of the computer market. Around the same time, microchips were invented.

Around 1975, kids began to play computer games. Parents needed personal computers. In five years, between 1979 to 1984, personal computers reached an annual sale volume of $15 to $16 billion. It had taken “main-frames” thirty years to reach this sale volume.

By 1980, IBM produced its own personal computer. By 1983, IBM became the world’s leading personal computer producer. By 1984, over one million computers had been sold.

It is not that IBM had better research and knew that this would happen. Everything they were absolutely certain about was disrupted. Yes, it was the “new normal” then just like it is the new normal now. IBM had to reorganize.

Just thinking about growth will never be enough. When kids started playing computer games and the computer industry changed, guess who won? The thinker (Univac) or the doer (IBM)?

E.P.I.C. Ministry

Churches need to be E.P.I.C. (Experiential, Participatory, Interactive, and Community).

Experiential

Experience is the new currency. Marketing experts are skilled at staging experiences. Starbucks is not about coffee. It is about the coffee-drinking experience.

In New York City, Nike’s 55,000 square foot store in SoHo is one of the company’s flagship stores. This amazing retail store redefines what it means to have “experience-driven retail.” Nike’s innovative approach is a game changer.

A church on Sundays is also a theatre experience. With a well-defined theme, we strive to eliminate negative cues that hinder engagement (slow website speed, poor audio or lighting). What memorabilia are people taking home? Giveaways, call-to-action (CTA) and free offers are put together to create engagement for retention (first 90 days) and engagement for spiritual formation (beyond 90 days).

Participatory

People are no longer consumers. They are now “prosumers.” People not only consume but also produce. They share and retweet. They post about you on their twenty plus social channels. What people say about you is more trusted than what you say about your church.

C.K. Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy, in their book, The Future of Competition, warn organizations against ignoring a “prosumer.” Prahalad states it this way:

“The power of consumer communities comes from their independence from the company. In the pharmaceutical industry, for instance, word of mouth about actual consumer experience with a drug, and not its claimed benefits, is increasingly affecting patient demands. Thus, consumer networking inverts the traditional top-down pattern to marketing communications.”

Interactive

Utilizing technology does not mean that we are conforming to the culture. Rather, it means we are recognizing where people are. By using technology, we are helping people interact, respond, and grow. Our channels of communication need to be interactive. Generational marketing requires that we promote to a specific generation of people based on their individual communication preference.

Church leaders need to embrace omni-channel and multi-generational marketing. Leaders can no longer ignore the way Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen X absorb information. We are now working with 1.8 billion young people between the ages of 10 and 24. It is the highest ever in human history. This number will continue to grow.

Church automation will have to embrace omni-channel marketing. Most North Americans check their mobile phone an average of 34 times per day. Only 27% of millennials follow the news, compared to 46% of Gen X and 61% of baby boomers. (PRC)

We face the unique challenge of managing five generations of communication amid our ever-changing digital environment. Generations are going to get shorter and more compressed. Soon, Church leaders will be working with seven to eight generations in North America.

Community

Without a building (a physical location), you need an online community. Contacts that used to be managed in person can now happen online. Chatbots, text messages, and social media channels provide greater opportunities for engagement. You do not have to invent something new. We can learn from what is proven and works.

The 3 C’s of an EPIC online ministry are Celebrate (Sundays), Connect (Small groups and pastoral care), and Contribute (time and resources). Without an unrelenting focus on Discipleship, Engagement, and a Faith-building Community (DEF), hunger for likes, followers and “busianity” will replace Christianity. Losing the spiritual focus and valuing the wrong things are dangers that Church leaders need to avoid. Counting the wrong things, the trappings, will not get us anywhere.

We Are In The Fourth Wave

The first wave was oral. Religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Judaism, Catholicism, and Islam used oral traditions to transmit scriptures, rituals, hymns, folktales, mythologies, or chants from one generation to the next.

The second wave was all about written communication. Goldsmith Johanne Gutenberg was a political exile from Mainz, Germany. He began experimenting with printing in Strasbourg, France. He invented the printing press around 1436. Gutenberg returned to Mainz several years later. By 1450, the first movable type allowed people to print marketing materials.

In 1472, William Coxton was the first to use print advertising. He printed an advertisement for a book and nailed them to the church doors in England. Church leaders transitioned from hand-copied manuscripts to the first print run of the Bible in Latin. It took three years to print around 200 copies.

Legend has it that in the month of October, 1517, priest and scholar Martin Luther posted his 95 thesis on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. He mailed his point of view to the archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg, Albert of Brandenburg. Martin Luther realized the potential of the printing press. In the 1520s, Martin Luther’s use of technology brought a significant increase in the number of printing businesses. Luther even brought the experienced printer Melchior Lotther from Leipzig to Wittenberg to establish a printing shop.

The third wave of communication was visual. Initially, some pastors resisted video technology. They saw preaching as a sacred act and believed that the spoken word was powerful. As video projectors replaced overhead projectors, PowerPoint became popular in church services in the early 2000s. The use of ProPresenter, video clips from movies, TV, and other outside sources became the norm. Media Pastors in churches grew in popularity, just as hiring an Online Church Pastor is becoming more common today. We are now using image-based channels (YouTube, social channels, and Online Church) to stream church content.

The fourth wave is the loss of “real presence.” Sixteen years before the 2020 pandemic, in August of 2004, Craig Groeschel received criticism for starting an online church. Laura Turner wrote an article in the New York Times titled “Internet Church Isn’t Really Church.” Here is how she described her wrestle:

“Going to church – sitting in a room with other people for an hour and a half on Sundays – is non-negotiable for me, unless I’m out of town.”“The intention behind live-streaming services – to make the church and its attendant benefits of community, prayer, and worship, available to everyone with a smartphone – is a good one. But it presumes that God is primarily present to us one on one, as individuals, rather than as a community of believers. This is not what the Bible says…”
“In an era when everything from dates to grocery delivery can be scheduled and near-instant, church attendance shouldn’t be one more thing to get from an app. We can be members of a body best when we are all together…”

Church leaders today post their point of view on social channels. Instead of mailing a letter, we send emails and text messages as a way of direct marketing. We are all learning as we minister to our congregations. Neither Blog 101, Podcast 101, Social Channels 101, nor Lead Generation 101 were courses during our time at Bible College. Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), 5G, and virtual reality are pushing us to the forefront of using technology to extend God’s kingdom.

Bending The Curve

The billionaire owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban, was asked what aspects of American life he expected to see changed due to the 2020 pandemic. Mark said, “Everything.”

The reality is that when tanks came on the scene, the cavalry became obsolete. In World War I, the British used tanks to beat the Germans. In 1940, the Germans built a better tank. The Russians designed an even better tank to beat the Germans. Technology will continue to disrupt our plans. Look at General Motors, Blockbuster Videos, Smith Corona typewriters, BlackBerry phones, and many more companies that have been victims of these disruptions.

Technological changes are happening at an even faster pace. 2020 was the tipping point. 2021 to 2030 will record a technology carnage that humankind has never seen before. Take a picture of all the electronic gadgets that you are using today. They will all look slower and uglier in the next decade. Yet leaders are still not realizing the full scope of 5G, the internet of things, and voice-enabled technology that is about to hit us.

Those who do not understand the online subscription model will get wiped out as content providers.

Education, entertainment, and experience are the three legs to a stool that is about to be battered by a tsunami of changes. Every content provider is about to be rocked by Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), in the first five years, and Virtual Reality (V.R.) in the next five years.

Universities, schools, and educational institutions should brace themselves for dramatic changes in consumer behavior. Content will be available on-demand, frictionless, and interactive with A.I., creating an experience bubble based on individuals’ preferences.

My elder daughter works in the field of computer science and is a Machine Learning Algorithm Developer. She, along with many other professionals, volunteers with Mukti Volunteer Village (a registered Canadian charity started by my family). We have Salesforce developers and Learning Management System experts working together to ensure that an online education platform will provide free education to children around the world.

When we went from radio to television, we tried to create television programs just like radio. We tried to copy the old style on a new medium. Location based content providers are going to struggle to grasp the new reality. Their past success will get in the way.

The largest transportation company did not come up with the idea of Uber. The traditional taxi system started to crumble when Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp founded Uber. It is hard to believe that a software app in San Francisco would allow driver recruitment and customers to order car rides online. By November 2015, Uber was valued at $70 billion USD and had spread to over 250 cities worldwide.

Successful hotels like Hyatt and Marriot did not feel the need to introduce Airbnb. Retailers like Kmart or Walmart did not feel the necessity to experiment with online shopping. Yet Amazon survived the dot-com bubble burst by becoming a dominant player in online shopping.

Restaurants started to change the way they were serving the customers. Starbucks launched its mobile app in 2015. McDonald’s started rolling out ordering kiosks in 2016.

The banking sector also experienced change. In 2015, Atom Bank received its banking license in the UK. This digital-only bank launched a mobile app. The bank had no physical branches or bank tellers. It was a step away from traditional brick-and-mortar banking. Atom Bank was using the Google cloud platform to keep pace with its growth. By 2017, it became the most preferred bank in the UK. The first “mobile-only bank” was the Uber of banking.

We were getting clear signals before the pandemic. Some leaders chose to ignore these signs. The irony is that many successful organizations do not feel the need to bend the curve. We should have been noticing what others were already doing. We chose not to.

We Must Not Forget Church History!

Our church history must not be forgotten, and by that I mean a church history created in North America at the dawn of the 21st century.

The National Institute of Biblical Studies surveyed 583 students between September 1980 and May 1981 to gauge the satisfaction with video training. The result:

Average score for Increased Bible Understanding: 4.18Average score for Technical Excellence: 4.30Average score for Speaker’s Effectiveness: 4.58

Several North American pastors were pioneering the use of video sermons in early 2000. They were grappling with how the audience would respond to this new technology. Did people react as a group when a preacher asked a question? Did they raise their hands? Did they applaud? Did they laugh in all the right places?

We have seen eight different types of video preaching in North American since then.

Church on Television: Pastor Herbert Hanbidge Barber served as Senior Pastor of Calvary Temple in Winnipeg (Canada) from 1953-1997. In the early sixties, Dr. Barber decided to bring his church service to the television and in January 1962, created the show Faith to Live By. His church board had said, “If you can find the dollars to pay for this, great, but if it does under that’s it.” It became the longest-running television show in Canadian history. In that sense, Pastor Herber needs to be remembers as one of the first church leaders to embrace the use of visual technology. One Church – Many Locations: Meetings in two or more locations at the same time, and sharing the preacher by livestream video.Video Cafes: Groups of congregations meeting at the same campus but at different times, with different worship styles, watching recordings of the same preacher. Larry Osborne, at North Coast Church, near San Diego (in California), coined the phrase “video café” in 1998. He contracted with Starbucks to supply coffee to the attenders. He bought tables and greenery to create the feel of a café.Satellite Churches: Churches with satellite campuses meeting in remote locations, watching pre-recorded sermons of the senior pastor.Preacher-less Churches: Independent congregations using sermons of another church; with their own worship band, pastoral care and programs.Siamese Sanctuaries: Andy Stanley looked at two worship centers built back -to-back with a live video feed from one sanctuary to another.Online Church: In August for 2004, Craig Groeschel, Senior Pastor of Life Church, based in Edmond, Oklahoma, had a satellite link built at the Oklahoma City campus that provided LifeChurch.tv, with the ability to send a livestream worldwide. Craig received criticism for starting an “internet campus.” Before the pandemic 3,000 churches where using the free Church Online platform offered by Life Church. By August 2020, 27,000 churches were using this platform.Metaverse Church: Life Church started a ministry in Second Life in 2007, a platform for virtual games in which people interact with each other using their avatars. On December 12, 2021, Craig Groeschel delivered his sermon in a virtual reality service powered by Microsoft’s AltspaceVR platform (altvr.com). You can read more about this at www.life.church/metaverse/.

H.H.Barber, Larry Osborne, Andy Stanley, Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, John Ortberg, and Craig Groeschel will be remembered as the pioneers of video sermons.

Looking More Like Jesus

The process of spiritual formation is similar to flying a kite. As a child, you learn to discern. You pay attention to the wind. Just like the wind cannot be controlled, neither can your walk with Jesus be boxed in. Part of spiritual formation is to discern what God is saying and wanting you to do.

Spiritual Formation starts with two questions:

1. What does it mean when people accept Jesus as their Lord and teacher?

2. Is it possible for apprentices to experience what Jesus’ disciples experienced over 2,000 years ago?

The central question for leaders is to look at how are we helping people transform their lives. Confession, self-examination, prayer, and solitude are all required in the process of spiritual formation. It will also require studying, praying, and worshipping.

Despite the emergence of digital transformation, most church leaders are not designing their ministry to drive attenders toward spiritual formation. Likes and followers on social media will not suffice to generate engagement for spiritual formation.

The popular success model was measured with ABC (Attendance, Buildings, and Cash). It’s DEF now (Discipleship, Engagement, and Faith-building community). Rather than counting Christians, we should weigh them. We need to weigh them in terms of spiritual formation. Church members and leaders should apprentice others as we learn together to be more like Jesus.

There are also those in the church who are simply interested in attending your events (consumers). Jesus, too, faced the challenge of finding followers among the crowds who wanted food, miracles, and an experience. Pastors can tell a second group exists, those who are committed to learning from Jesus. If church leaders are not teachers who are interested in Learning Management System (LMS) and pursuing spiritual formation, it will be difficult to see it flourish among those who attend the church. 

LMS as an online tool is a wonderful way to engage with younger audience who prefer to be on their smart phones. People can also self-select the areas in which they desire using the LMS. LMS allows people to connect at their convenience and learn at their own pace. 

LMS is an effective tool that can help you access where people are in their spiritual journey and where they should focus next.  You can keep track of engagement to identify folks who are ready to go deeper. It is beneficial to have your content assessable 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 

Your goal as a church leader is to equip an array of leaders who can assist believers in specific areas of growth. In-person and one-on-one online apprenticeship sessions, along with online forums, can help LMS participants to connect with like-minded church members and make significant strides in their spiritual growth.

The intention of your LMS needs to be to help your church attenders to reach the destination of being more like Jesus. The consistent online teaching and pathway that you offers should help them to take another road and learn how to redirect their life.