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.