Technology - does it bring us together or isolate us more?

I am part of a generation that fell on the cusp of a drastic change. In high school during class we would write notes by hand, fold them in unique ways, and pass them to one another in the hall between classes. Then we would sit in the next hour class hoping our friend would have a moment to write a note back. Then we would have to plan to run into one another in the hallway again between classes for another exchange.

Now I am in the workforce five states from my hometown. I can text an old high school friend, who I connected with after all these years over facebook, and instantly get a response.

I learned to type in high school on a typewriter. By college I had a laptop computer and my very first email account. In college my friends and I didn’t even think about cell phones and a year after graduation we had them by our side.

This change is obvious and may seem simple as most of us quickly adapt to a world that can network like never before. However, this change is putting stress on the church. An older generation experiences worship differently than the younger generation – yet we are called to worship together.

Let’s say we bring a video into worship to reach the younger crowd. A man in their 60’s responds, “It was so fasted paced it left me out of breath and all I was doing was watching a video.”

On the other hand, a twenty-three year old who watched the same video said, “It is too slow.” In this electronic age we are being wired differently. Our brains process information differently and therefore, we experience worship differently.

It is no surprise that those most influenced by electronic culture participate in church at far lower levels than those of previous generations. Article after article is being written about meeting this technology generation on the web: Facebook, Blogger, MySpace, and YouTube… and I won’t deny these can be great tools that the church can embrace.

However, we can’t just get on the internet and stare at a monitor while typing on a keyboard and call it church. In Greek the word for church, ecclesia, means assembly or call out. It is a gathering of those who are called out. We must continue to gather and find a way to not be even more isolated on Sunday morning. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “The most segregated time in America is on Sunday between the hours of 10-11am.”

What is your denomination? What is your style of worship? What is your ethnicity? What is your sexuality? What is your age?

These labels are human instituted, yet, we continue to worship where our labels place us. We are called out by God to gather as one body in Christ. May the Spirit guide our hearts to see our human instituted labels less and our gracious gift of being one in Christ more!