Remember – I’m not trying to be the churchy equivalent of a restaurant critic. I merely wish to see how other churches use technology. Nothing I write is to be construed as being good or bad – its just an observation. You readers are supposed to send me some value judgments.
C and I recently visited Discovery Church in Orlando, Florida. It’s a very seeker oriented church – no crosses, hymnals, pews, or altars. No dressing up for church. At first one would think it would attract mostly 30 somethings, but there were more than a few grey-beards like me in the audience.
But do they ever use technology! The band is spread across the stage, and behind that is a single rear-projection screen. The content shown on the screen is displayed using Sunday Plus! software. This allows the band to play and the audience to sing along without the need for hymnals or service bulletins. Announcements, song lyrics, illustrations used during the message (sermon), video clips - they’re all on the big screen.
When a verse of a song was repeated (sung twice in a row), rather than just leave the same slide up, the words appeared just slightly off position from where they were, so you wouldn’t think the slide was still up there by mistake.
The pastor makes effective use of multimedia as a part of the message. To illustrate, the Beatles tune “Do It My Way” was played, while various quotes were shown on the screen to begin the process of engaging the audience in the message – “I have lots of faults – being wrong is not one of them.” (Jimmy Hoffa) or “We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it..” (D. D. Eisenhower), and Matthew 5:9 “ Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.” The quotations were married with scripture passages illuminating the opposing viewpoint. A short clip from the movie “The Waterboy” was shown to illustrate conflict.
Once the audience was engaged, the pastor began his message – liberally using “bullet points” on the screen to prompt the audience member to write down notes on an included notepad in the bulletin. The list was ‘typed’ on a brick wall background, as a metaphor for the sermon message. There was also a multiple choice ‘quiz’ shown, read by the pastor during the sermon, to amplify his points. There was a break in the sermon to emphasize the point of destructive gossip – a song performed (and maybe written) by the band “If you can’t say something nice….”
This is a church that believes it should be a teaching church, and it totally understands the concept of interaction in teaching the message. The technology is not used merely for the sake of using kewl technology – it is used at the appropriate points to help the audience members learn the message – not just hear it.
The consequence, of course, is that messages (sermons) can not be created in a week. In talking with the production crew (yep – that’s what they called themselves) afterwards, I found out the pastor plans out the messages an entire year in advance. That way, the rest of the team has time to develop multimedia clips, storyboard the worship service, and rehearse.
In our church, it would take a long time (and a lot of money) to develop Discovery Church’s kind of true multimedia environment. Further, it would take some time for our attendees to adjust to having multimedia in their sermons – this is a conservative group of people. However, there is no reason we could not use Sunday Plus! to show song lyrics, with some appropriate backgrounds. Also, it could be used to display DVD generated praise music prior to the arrival of the music team, which often arrives just before services because they are playing at another church. That could be used to “warm up” the congregation prior to the contemporary praise music service.
I had done some research a few months ago, and determined that Sunday Plus! was probably the best software for our use. Seeing a church as technically sophisticated as Discovery using Sunday Plus! validated that conclusion.
I was surprised I did not see a “cue” monitor in back of auditorium for pastor’s message notes, and/or lyrics for music team to use. The “tech team” told me the pastor had it together so well, he didn’t need one. My feeling is that most folks would need a monitor.
Discovery makes great use of the web. Besides the great website at www.discoverychurch.org, they also have a great web site for teens at www.thelement.com. (Interestingly, the chat rooms and discussion boards see little use.)
The worship service is sent out on streaming media on web. Right now, they have only one camera, but are planning to install two more remote controlled cameras, but no hand-helds – probably so as not to annoy worshipers.
CDs and audio tapes of that day’s message are available immediately after the service – for a small cost. I think they are doing no more than recovering costs.
On a non-technical note, the ushers approached fidgety children during the message with plastic cups of crayons or goldfish crackers.
There is a concurrent kids service taking place with the main service. This too uses technology, but on a much smaller scale, such as videos for sing-alongs.
In my limited experience, only Willow Creek uses technology as profusely as Discovery.
Comments