Thursday, September 1, 2011

Headed to church? Don't forget your iPad


From Seattle-

Over the last year we’ve seen iPads appear in restaurants, during meetings at work and even on-air on TV news anchor’s desks.
But what if they start appearing in church?
Kerry Allman is the Internet Strategist for the Diocese of Olympia, the Episcopal Church in Western Washington.

This week Allman took to his blog ‘Putting the I-T in Spirit’ and proposed just such an idea:

I may be going out on a bit of a limb here, but I would like to talk about using technology as part of the liturgical service. What I mean by this is the idea of using smartphones/iPads/Kindles for following along in the service.

With most churches already blogging, on Facebook and Twitter, as Allman sees it this would be the next logical step in spiritual digital communications.

Allman writes about one of the complaints he hears most often regarding his denomination’s worship practices and it is that there are so many books to juggle:

Now for us “cradle Episcopalians”, being able to navigate around a prayer book, hymnal and lectionary insert is part of the right of passage and joy (if I may be so bold) of being Episcopalian. But the reality is that cradle Episcopalians are a distinct minority. Many people are coming to the church later in life and many times from either another faith tradition or no tradition at all. So when a visitor with no background in the church suddenly has to wend their way through bulletin inserts, prayer books, hymnals (sometimes more than one) and anything else….well, the experience could be overwhelming and not in a necessarily good way.

More here-

http://www.komonews.com/news/topline/128817438.html

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