Items of Interest June 18, 2012 Issue

More churches turning to high-tech outreach

Cathy Lynn Grossman

Christ Fellowship [a church in McKinney, Texas] exemplifies most of the latest ways churches dramatically extend their reach of church beyond any one time or local address. Such congregations signal ‘‘a willingness to meet new challenges,’’ said Scott Thumma, of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. He’s the author of a study by Faith Communities Today (FACT) of how churches, synagogues, and mosques use the Internet and other technology.

FACT’s national survey of 11,077 of the nation’s 335,000 congregations, released in March, found seven in ten US congregations had websites, and four in ten had Facebook pages by 2010, Thumma says. . . . He recently began tracking churches that stream their worship—about one percent of congregations, Thumma estimates.

No matter the technology, the overall focus remains the same, [John Mark] Reynolds [director of the honors institute at Biola University, a private evangelical school] said: ‘‘How can the Christian church utilize the tools media have given us without being subsumed by them? You don’t want delivery to become everything.’’

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