Steven Hunter - Peter Horsfield: The Church and Electronic Culture

Is the church too traditional?

I recently read an article by Peter Horsfield entitled, “The Church and Electronic Culture.” I found it very interesting. First let me talk about Horsfield. He is a minister of the Uniting Church in Australia and is doing a special research project on electronic media. The article talks about how the world has changed and for the first time in history the main form of communication, which is not faced to face, is not writing. It is through electronic media.

The article talks about how electronic media is how people are informed now, but the church has not been able to master that concept. That is why the church is finding it increasingly more difficult to bring new members to the church. He stated that the church is locked in on being an “oral” teacher and many people are missing the message because they communicate through electronics.

This article was extremely interesting because it made me think of the movie Fight Club, we watched in class. It reminded me of how people in the movie were so materialistic that they were losing a sense of purpose and meaning in their life. This article reminded me of that because people in today’s society are missing out on God because of technology. Technology has sort of taken over as a new false-god. Can the church find a way to communicate through technology, but still get God’s message across? I don’t know if they will be able to because the church wants to remain simplistic; however, they may have to change in order to keep their community strong by brining in new members.
I would recommend other read this article, I found it very intriguing. It was found at religion-online.org.