Finding God Online

Found an interesting quote referencing "religious experiences" online.

Internet churches and religious webcasts drawing more congregants
Denver Post, 10/19/2007

..."Church is not the Internet or a building — it's people." If the notion that a virtual community can be as real as a physical one seems crazy, you may be showing your age.

Thanks to online shopping, online dating, online social networking and online darn-near-everything-else, many young Americans don't distinguish between their friends from school and those from Facebook.

These youngsters just see them all as friends, said David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, a consulting firm that conducts survey research for churches and other religious groups.

In fact, Kinnaman's firm predicts that by 2010, 10 percent of Americans will rely exclusively on the Internet for their religious experience.

But that doesn't necessarily mean attending church services online, Kinnaman said. Young people define spirituality broadly, to include listening to religious music, discussing religion in an online forum, or watching a video sermon on a topic that interests them at that particular moment.

I love it. 10% of Americans will exclusively rely on the Internet to find God. The church has a long way to go before we can effectively reach that 10%.

Disagree with the Denver Post article? I referenced some articles for the other side in a previous post I wrote called Church Cowards and the USA Today. Of course, I was hyper-critical of their views, but I guess you can ignore that part.

In that same vein, let me go ahead and mention digital.leadnet.org's article listing several churches that have a full Internet-campus. Awesome to see how early adopters are pushing the barriers of technology/tradition.

Comments

[ttm]

Churches that don't do more than advertise via internet are missing an awesome opportunity to love their neighbors.

I've also read about, but haven't yet spent time nosing around the online Church Without Religion sponsored by Plain Truth Ministries. It can be found at: http://www.ptm.org/cwr/