Introduction
Church Ministry must have plan for something impossible to know the future. The ability to read and interpret the signs of the times is a core competency required of leaders as we move into the 21st century. Whether we realize it or not, change destabilizing change is the primary fact of life for church leaders and members today, and will continue to be the primary factor in the future. Destabilizing change is the field in which the church will sow the seeds of faithfulness and effective ministry. The forces of secularism, technology, globalization, diversity, relativization, and post-modernism have come together to create disequilibrium, which necessitates changes in the church.[1] The Bible challenges each generation to communicate the gospel to their children (Psalm 78:4). Today in this Digital and Technological age, it is our turn to accept this challenge. God has provided technology as a powerful tool and a compelling cultural symbol, and we can use digital and technology to make our efforts more effective. As the church of our generation continues to respond to the Great Commission (Acts. 1:8) it must consider how technology will play a part in proclaiming the Gospel. Digital Ministries was formed to help the church with that task. While this isn’t entirely aware of it, it is in serious trouble. A church that is without a clear vision of its future places that future in jeopardy. [2]
1. The Ministry Challenge for Digital and Technology Age
1-1 From Traditional to Digital and Technology Age
For centuries Christian artists have moved the message of the Holy Scriptures form its oral form to icon, mosaic, stained glass and painting as well as to highly illuminate written and printed texts. For their part preacher have turned printed texts into homilies and pulpit sermons whose oral and illustrative nature explicates difficult biblical passage, making them culturally accessible to church laity.[3]
In our century, we see the transfer of the Scriptures to radio, film, television, and now the Internet and World Wide Web. The move from one medium to another has become part of the practical theology of the church. People do it and members of local and universal churches judge the result. Consider two cases: Protestant evangelist Aimee Semple Mcpherson and Roman Catholic bishop Jacques Gailot. Mcpherson who virtually invented radio evangelism in the 1920s use commercial broadcasting to help launch worldwide Pentecostalism thus embedding the Scripture in a new technology and forever changing the form and content of evangelism and religious discourse. Gailot bishop of Evreus near Pairs suffered the displeasures of the Vatican and on Jan 13 1994 was reassigned ti the North Africana diocese of Partenia. There bishop Gailler created in Jan 1996 Roman Catholicism’s first virtual diocese when he put his See on the World Wide Web with its own homes pages accessible under http:/www.partenia.fr. Like Mcpherson, Gaillot has acculturated the Gospel in a new form and created communications network to proclaim the Good news.[4]
1-2 The Ministry Challenge for Digital and Technology Age
It is one sign if time that traditional forms of literacy such as reading and writing are declining while new forms of literacy results, in part that permanent fixture in home, the television and in part from the increasing portability and ubiquity of computers popular music and electronic games. Another sign of changing time is increased awareness of the ways in which culture, theology, and communications interact one with another. We have come to see this interaction particularly at the places where the church transfers its theological content, for example it’s Holy Scriptures into particular cultures and then communicates that content in the forms of the host cultures and language groups. Since the 1960s it has communicational the Scriptures to and through English-language culture via translation theory called functional equivalence an approach to translation that transfers the meeting of source text into close natural equivalents within the language of a target text.[5] It is most recent formulation of the question inspired this volume and the Symposium upon which it is based: How can message of the Holy Scripture be faithfully translated and communicated from one medium to another?
In times past the fundamental means of presenting message to an audience has been through correspondence, radio, or television. Each of these methods is still viable yet requires a monetary investment, sometimes substantial, to undertake. When using these methods, their effectiveness is most often defined by the responses they generate. Consequently, the investment is made up front, and a response is hoped for to justify the investment.[6] Over the last few years, technology has begun a shift in society from an “as broadcasted” audience to an “on demand” one. Where at one time we listened to the radio or watched the TV at a designated time for our preferred show, setting our schedule around when the program was on. Now we can videotape the program or record it on a DVR for later viewing. We can go online to listen to audio or watch video as we desire, at a time that fits our schedule.[7] Recently it has become available for users to download TV programs to their iPhone to watch episodes they missed in previous weeks. People are becoming used to getting content at their discretion and using it at their leisure. It is causing a paradigm shift in how we produce and present content. It is also providing us an opportunity to leverage these advances to reach more people where they are, with less initial investment.[8]
While correspondence, radio, and television are still very viable options, today’s technological advances have provided us the ability to provide teaching to people at their leisure, at their location, “on demand”. These new advances can be incorporated with the other methods into church ministry approach for reaching people, providing them various types of content at a much lower cost to the ministry. Where we have been throwing the net out and hoping for a response, we can become the cupboard where those who are hungry come for food. This cupboard isn’t relegated to a specific geographical region, or to a specific time zone or timeslot. From it people from all over the world can receive, have needs met, and be given an opportunity to respond.[9]
With over 10 billion e-mails sent worldwide daily and 1.5 Billion people projected to be online by the end of 2006, online communications are expected to double in the next few years. Within this rapid growth advances have been made to make online video both easy and affordable. These new video options allow us to add the human element of emotions, gestures, and personality to what in times past had been simple text. How many times have you read e-mail and mistakenly added your own emotional interpretation that was never intended by the writer? Video now makes communicating online clearer, and much more personal. A person’s voice inflections, facial expressions, and style can be communicated and draw people in, as the unique style is accentuated and captured in video.[10]
In what historically speaking is a short amount of time, we have moved from the dedicated ministers who faithfully rode the circuit from town to town preaching God’s Word to a day and age where the Word of God can be preached and beamed to the far ends of the earth. What was once a local or regional outreach has now become one that is truly global in reach. In recent years we have marveled at the technological advances that have allowed the church to broadcast the gospel throughout the world via satellite and the Internet. These advances have suddenly made the fulfilling of the Great Commission found in Matthew 28:19-20 feasible, and present the church with a practical medium to help accomplish this charge.[11]
1-3 The Crisis of Change
Accelerating change defines our era. All institutions need to adapt. Futurist Alvin Toffler describes it as "simultaneous institutional crises, crisis in the education system, in urban systems, in the family system, crisis in all of the subsystems that make our society operate. These institutions were designed for industrialism, for a smokestack society. Now they're collapsing under the weight of increased diversity, heterogeneity, complexity, and speed." Because the surrounding society is changing, the church must also change in order to stay in line with its eternal mission and principles. During the present century, these patterns helped the church fulfill its prophetic role. But the culture has changed. The context for ministry and mission has changed.[12] Today's market place is dynamic. The social and religious landscape is being redefined. The church finds itself today in a missionary environment, where the majority of Europe, for example, is no longer believers. Technological advances in communication and transportation have brought people together who once seemed far away. Demographic shifts occur with greater frequency. Church membership is no longer an essential for many. Sunday are thoroughly commercialized. Moral standards are confused.[13] The church must learn to proclaim and embody the gospel of Jesus Christ in this new context. Is the church willing to analyze its new circumstances?
2. What Would Jesus Do?
Jesus went where the people were to reach them. He traveled throughout the countryside to from town to town teaching and preaching. Jesus ministered to people from all walks of life, visiting them in their own homes and environments. In Mark 2:13-17 we read the account of when Jesus went to Levi’s home for a feast being held to honor him. Jesus used the resources available to him to allow him to most effectively reach his audience.[14]
In Luke 5:1-3, Jesus was granted the use of a fishing boat to launch out a short distance from the shore and then used the natural acoustics of Lake of Gennesaret and its surroundings to speak to the multitude gathered there. It was Jesus’ way to go where he was needed and use what was available to help him minister most effectively. His heart was to reach people and reveal the love of God to them. Today Jesus can work through us to use the tools available to reach the world and share the Good News.[15]
3. Theological Challenge and Change
3-1. Forces Driving Change
In today's world, information and knowledge has become the coin of the realm, determining the wealth of nations. Digital information and knowledge drives the new technologies, pervasive popular media, and global economic integration that, along with increasing demographic diversity, are changing our world. Electronic telecommunications has stimulated individuals and institutions to think differently about everything they do.
As various cultures shift from industrialization toward an information and knowledge economy, established organizations are reinventing themselves and reconceptualizing their mission. With computer networks and e-mail, information flows sideways, far different from traditional pyramid-style hierarchy, where information moves mostly up and down. The resulting changes in social values, loss of traditional family structures, dominance of a market economy, outbreaks of ethnic conflict, all define the environment in which the church functions.[16] Pluralism dominates the religious world. Religions are no longer isolated by distance and communication barriers. As a result, people are aware of the wide range of competing faiths. The powerful values of individualism and a market economy suggest that each person has a wide range of choices for their private spiritual journey.
This new religious market place is characterized by the privatization of religious belief and practice, marginalization of organized religion, relativization of all religious thought and conviction, and trivialization of religious teaching and practice. In this competitive environment, people participate in the church on their own terms, not on the church's terms. The church's influence declines.[17]
The fear of congregationalism, a root springing up out of the church's history, threatens the worldwide focus of the church. Another major competitive threat is the electronic church. Televangelism draws money to itself which otherwise could have been donated to local congregations and ministries. Its often-sensational fundamentalism competes with the more reasoned theologies of established denominations.[18] The problems of an uneven world economy also impact the church. The great expansion over the past 50 years has created new centers of church in Africa and Latin America. This constitutes a good investment, but it has a heavy mortgage. These areas of the world are impoverished, not highly developed. At the same time, the Church in North America is increasingly middle class and expects to provide ministries appropriate to affluent communities. At the same time, as many governments (in North America, for example) abandon or curtail their responsibilities to the poor, additional demands falls on the church in right here in North America.[19]
3-2. Managing the Transition
The church is, and always has been, called to live in the "in-between," between the resurrection and the Eschaton, between the "already" and the "not yet." The church is called to be a "wilderness" people, constantly in transition, always open to the new challenges and opportunities that God and history provide.
Discerning leadership must be alert to the early-warning signs in the social environment so that they can promptly steer the church in a new direction that keeps it moving toward its ultimate destination. God's church should always be open to change. No small adjustments will be sufficient to deal with the major demographic and technological challenges, nor will they address the fundamental spiritual problems of apathy, lack of evangelistic growth in the West, and the temptations of nationalism, authoritarianism, and violence in the developing world. To be more faithful to its calling, the church must be representative, responsible, mission- driven, grace-centered, and as participatory as possible. The "corporate body language" of the church says a lot to the world and to itself about its beliefs. This includes structural issues. Form, after all, follows function. Leadership and laity must work together for the best possible organization. Such a vision is what it means to be the true people of God.
Changes that take place in the ministry's paradigm must be more than cosmetic. Of course, not all the changes that we see taking place in secular organizations belong in the church. An incremental approach will not yield the results we need. Change must be approached from a systems or strategic view, informed by principles from paradigm. Church leaders must become skilled in introducing change at all levels of the paradigm. Pastors and administrators need continuing education in the principles and processes of introducing change. We want to grow the church, not blow it up.
Paradigm tends to change when forced to, not of their own initiative. Knight observes that the Advance church has historically made changes only when it is on the verge of financial disaster and organizational dysfuntionality. The leaders who will make a difference in the future will be those with a renewed sense of discernment, the gift of hearing what the Spirit is saying to the church, and an ear to listen to the prophetic voices of its theologians and its people.
3-3. A Theological Challenge
Change in the church is a theological as well as a practical challenge. It involves discerning afresh what God is calling the church to be and do. Paradigm is not sacred. Theologians tell us that a church's ecclesiology emerges out of a faithful people's self-understanding. Change challenges the church's self-understanding. Old paradigms and models are insufficient. New ways to put the questions, new frameworks for dealing with them, new proposals for shaping the church's ministry and using its resources are urgently needed. It means a paradigm shift, one that transforms the church. [20] Bible principles are sacred, but no contemporary form of church polity ought to be presumed to be based on biblical precedent. Just as form is intended to serve function, so church polity is intended to serve mission. Fundamental presuppositions on which the church currently operates will need to be reexamined.
Leadership must be willing to anticipate, learn, respond, innovate, and design infrastructure to meet the demands of Christ's mission in a post-modern world. This requires a solid theory of planned transformation, tested conceptual tools, effective consulting practices, strategic management, and education. Congregations as well as conferences will need to re-vision the church in order to become more effective and remain faithful as the new millennium dawns and the sunset of creation takes place preparing to receive the creator. The church must always be engaged in the process of being made new. It is to be a new community, created by God, and offered to the world. It is called to be a new social order, breaking into the imperfect structures of created reality, a gift of the Holy Spirit. If the church does not constantly allow itself to be transformed by the Spirit, it fails to experience the redemptive and creative presence of God. If it loses touch with the source of its life and the purpose of its existence. It does not experience the liberation which the gospel rings and it cannot be a faithful instrument of God's grace.[21]
The church cannot control its own destiny. Called and empowered by the living God for mission, it does not have the luxury of time to make the required changes incrementally. Paradigm change is essential if the church is to be faithful. The current crisis facing the church, particularly in North America, is also an opportunity rich with potential. Embracing change as an opportunity for greater faithfulness, church leaders can view the current crisis as an opportunity to transform the church and thus participate in God's ongoing creative and redemptive mission for all humanity. The restructuring efforts must be more international than mere integration of faith and life course. The very methods of sociological and demographic research must be considered tools as essential in ministry as theological method.[22]
No sooner do we say this than we immediately confront one of the issues of the Digital and Technology Age; too much information. To accomplish this transition, seminaries must the same shift education is making. Educators are abandoning the “fill the empty vessel” model of education. The challehge of education in the age of information. Rather ministry within the seminary will have to adopt a model that trains future pastors in mastering the use of information technologies and the vast wealth of information that is available to solve the many unique problems they will face.[23]
3-4. The Ministry welcomes helpful change
A good way to get a head start on how the new technology of the twenty-first century will affect our lives and ministries is to read Bill Gates’s book The Road Ahead. He is convinced that we are on the brink of crossing a technology threshold that will for ever change the way we buy, work, learn and communicate. Just truly, so the tools of the information age, which are rapidly becoming a present reality, will transformation the way we make choices about almost everything.[24]
The information highway can serve the church to advance the kingdom of God in this world. However it would be absurd to assume that all this technology is for good. Problems will surface with the information highway just as they have with the personal computer. How may we as leaders discern the vest wat to take advantage of new technology? The answer is to travel up and down the highway not with blinders over our eyes but with a biblical filter in front of our face. That filter is our mission statement, based on the unchanging Word of God.[25]
Conclusion
This article essays the need for planned change to keep the church ministry paradigm in line with God's purposes in the Digital and Technology Age. Church ministry paradigm either aids or hinders mission. Church ministry paradigm in the digital and technology age needs a paradigm capable of meeting challenges and opportunities never before imagined. This will require the insights, not only of key leaders, but also church historians and sociologists.[26]
Among others, church historian George Knight has repeatedly called for structural change. He points out that the paradigm put in place a hundred years ago has become increasingly rigid and bureaucratic. Not only do we see signs that the church's massive organizational paradigm needs to be trimmed, but some question traditional church's hierarchical structure and urge a congregational polity.[27]
Today's new environment demands responsiveness, innovation, and flexibility. Therefore, a new ecclesiology with explicit implications for new advance paradigm concepts is essential. The task facing church ministry today is to enable a complex organization to be faithful, effective, and efficient during a time of rapid change in a culturally diverse context. If church leaders are to rise to this challenge, they must learn how to transform not only what the churches do ministry but also the paradigm itself. Church paradigm, infrastructures, policies, and procedures that have been effective in another age and under different circumstances are not necessarily adequate for the future. For the church to remain viable, leadership must anticipate change.[28]
Challenge for new advance church ministry paradigm in the digital and technology age is that shared vision and values must emerge and be constantly articulated if substantial progress is to take place. People need to know where the church is headed (vision) and what their role is (values).[29]
Bibliography
Aubrey Malphurs, Developing a Dynamic Mission for Your Ministry, Grand Rapids, MI, Kregel Publications, 1998
Aubrey Malphurs, Ministry Nuts and Bolts: What They Don't Teach Pastors in Seminary, Grand Rapids, MI, Kregel Publications, 1998
David L. McKenna, The Church in the Age of Information, New York, NY, Here's Life, 1986
Edward O. Bary, Theological Reflection: The Creation of Spiritual Power in the Information Age, Collegeville, MN, Liturgical Press, 2003
George R. Hunsberger and Craig V. Gelder, The Church Between Gospel and Culture: The Emerging Mission in North America, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans Publishing, 1996
Jorge R. Schement and Brent D. Ruben, Between Communication and Information, Piscataway, NJ, Transaction Publishers, 1993
Mike Regele and Mark Schulz Death of the Church, Grand Rapids, MI, Zondervan, 1995
Paul A. Soukup and Robert Hodgson, From One Medium to Another: Communicating the Bible Through Multimedia, New York, NY, Rowman & Littlefield, 1997
Peter Scazzero and Warren Bird, Emotionally Healthy Church, Grand Rapids, MI, Zondervan, 2003
Phil Cooke, Creative Christian Media, Longwood, FL, Xulon Press, 2006
Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Church: Growth Without Compromising Your Message & Mission, Grand Rapids, Mi, Zondervan, 1995
[1] Aubrey Malphurs, Ministry Nuts and Bolts: What They Don't Teach Pastors in Seminary, Grand Rapids, MI, Kregel Publications, 1998, p10
[2] Ibid., p10
[3] George R. Hunsberger and Craig V. Gelder, The Church Between Gospel and Culture: The Emerging Mission in North America, Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans Publishing, 1996, p33
[4] Ibid., p33
[5] Paul A. Soukup and Robert Hodgson, From One Medium to Another: Communicating the Bible Through Multimedia, New York, NY, Rowman & Littlefield, 1997, p3
[6] Phil Cooke, Creative Christian Media, Longwood, FL, Xulon Press, 2006, p82
[7] Ibid., p84
[8] Ibid., p85
[9] Ibid., p85
[10] Ibid., p86
[11] Ibid., p88
[12] Aubrey Malphurs, Developing a Dynamic Mission for Your Ministry, Grand Rapids, MI, Kregel Publications, 1998, p22
[13] Ibid., p22
[14] Jorge R. Schement and Brent D. Ruben, Between Communication and Information, Piscataway, NJ, Transaction Publishers, 1993, p174
[15] Ibid., p174
[16] Edward O. Bary, Theological Reflection: The Creation of Spiritual Power in the Information Age, Collegeville, MN, Liturgical Press, 2003, p193
[17] David L. McKenna, The Church in the Age of Information, New York, NY, Here's Life, 1986, p98
[18] Ibid., p102
[19] Ibid., p105
[20] Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Church: Growth Without Compromising Your Message & Mission, Grand Rapids, Mi, Zondervan, 1995, p163
[21] Ibid., p167
[22] Mike Regele and Mark Schulz, Death of the Church, Grand Rapids, MI, Zondervan, 1995, p203
[23] Ibid., p203
[24] Aubrey, op. cit., p22
[25] Ibid., p22
[26] Peter Scazzero and Warren Bird, Emotionally Healthy Church, Grand Rapids, MI, Zondervan, 2003, p49
[27] Ibid., p50
[28] Ibid., pp59-61
[29] Edward, op, cit., p204