Chapter 15: Digital Church Boosts, Bloopers and Busts

Australian Churches as a whole seem to fall into two categories at the moment - those that carefully preserve print and real time worship traditions without digital technology, and those that combine print and face to face communication modes with digital equipment of various kinds, in various ways. That said, there are very few Churches in Australia today which do not use digital equipment at all: every Australian church has a digitally produced weekly liturgy booklet cum bulletin, and most Australian clergy and musicians can tell woeful tales of digital sound system misbehaviour. Some flourishing Australian churches now have digital tablet donation systems and worship programs that parishioners can access.

As one of my weekly tasks as a 1960s teenager at St Theodore's Anglican Church (at  Elizabeth South, Adelaide, South Australia) was to type, draw illustrations, and set up the "Parish Pump" carbon stencils on the roneo drum, then print many copies by laboriously turning the roneostat machine handle, I must confess that I thank God for digital technology. However, I do value my carefully preserved copies of the ancient St Theodore's Parish Pump!

Digital Church technology is a fairly recent phenomenon in Australia, where full suites of Church equipment are very expensive to buy, maintain, power, license, and keep connected to the internet. Some of the reluctance of Australian churches to use these new technologies is due to costs, but other factors also influence church decisions. Foremost among these is the idea that digital technology is the exclusive province of the young, a dogma that has been promoted in Australian schools and media. The other conceptual barrier is that digital technology is often believed to be totally incompatible with, and a threat to, the familiar traditions of print, libraries, real time traditional worship, traditional church architecture, and seminar teaching / discussions. Neither of these two assumptions are necessarily true. Digital technology can be adapted to the requirements of any church, and many overseas churches have used it to enhance traditional liturgies, assist elderly parishioners, and establish profitable online mission outreach and sales of local church products.

Negative myths and prejudices about digital technology can and should be challenged, not with the intention of rejecting them utterly, but to point out that it can be of great benefit when used properly, therefore all Christians, whatever their age, have both a right and a duty to familiarize themselves with it as far as they are able, and to use it wisely and moderately to promote the Church and it's mission, while also preserving the treasures of Christian faith and tradition.

Chapter 14 : Where have all the faithful poets gone?

Australian Christians know, and can often recite from memory, lots of beautiful scriptural poetry, including the psalms and the Beatitudes, and countless other well loved texts - but where are the Aussie Christian poets of our era? This is one public arena that Australian Churches have, little by little, deserted, since the 1960s cultural cringe got the better of us. St James Anglican Church, King Street, Sydney, is one of the very few Australian Churches that still make an effort to value, recognise and publish local Australian Christian poetry - see their monthly magazine, Collections, at www.sjks.org.au

Thankfully, Australia has its share of brave social justice poets, such as Bruce Dawe, and the irrepressible Michael Leunig, not forgetting the rising crowd of young hymn-writers. I've just met the enterprising Rev. John Bunyan, who's just published his collection of contemporary sonnets. Attending Aussie poetry performance events and slams can also be an eye-opener. However, overtly Christian poets are barely there, due to supercilious pressure from the Great Unchurched, and a new consciousness that religion is as prone to human error and falsification as any human endeavour, when left unguarded.  

However, a little digging may unearth a new generation of brave Aussie Christian bards. 

Hence my poetic rant below :

Theopoetica

(by Elizabeth Sheppard)

I went to read my poems at a festival, one day,

I milled about with hardy minds intent on speak and say.

Some raged about the status quo, some decorated pages,

A few explored in metaphors, and fame adorned the stages.

I stepped up, page in hand, to spout my lines as well as able;

Poetic censors viewed my rhymes, to gauge their market value.

They scanned my writing, peered at me, tut-tutted, sneered, and quibbled;

"Dear lady, take your scribbles home! No faith's allowed, in Babel!"

I said, "Hang on, your poster said you welcome all and sundry!

God's Word, expressed in rhyme and song, has always fed the hungry!"

They looked again, and said, "Your views are well beyond the pale,

Why can't you just convert to us, and tell a faithless tale?

Pick out a premise, patronize, promote a well-paid fashion!

We don't mind how you put it - just don't mention God, or Mammon!"

I retreated, shocked and sobered by this cynic attitude,

Then reviewed the poems offered by parades of poets new.

Not a skerrick of religion, of God's Word, or truth, or right:

In their place sat King Disorder, with his Jester, Poet Lite!

There were atheistic sonnets and iconoclastic odes,

Wandering agnostic ballads, endless paradigms of woe,

There were formulaic wonders, cybergenerated clones

Of great Shakespeare, and I-sonnets of a narcissistic tone.

In this Godless realm of Babel, where the voice of faith is stilled,

There's a way to save religion, that our ancestors knew well.

With faith, disguised as fiction in a Potter-like abyss,

We revert to allegory, laced with satire, dreams, and myths,

So, as metaphysics comes of age, perambulating far,

And teaches faith in parables, raising the Christmas star,

A greater witness lies in store, in this our cyberspace;

God's love unfurls its flags of faith, victorious over hate.