Of the 150 or so acres making up Willow Creek Community Church’s main campus, a full 8 acres are devoted to buildings. Parking lots cover more than 28. That ratio demonstrates just how important cars are to most churches today.
The recently released LivesOn is a new app that takes digital memorials in a new direction: LivesOn will continue tweeting in your stead after you die. And not just in your stead, but also in your style and tone with content you’d probably have tweeted about. It will be as if you had never died.
Are computers simply higher life forms? Are we all headed that way? Is it program or perish? Some people today truly think so. They see downloading the mind into a computer as humanity’s hope for immortality.
Every technological innovation has benefits and consequences. The benefits convince us to adopt it. But the consequences often come to light only later. For technologists, Deuteronomy 22:8 commends itself. It offers a principle that can guide ethical innovation.
While the Crusaders once wielded swords, Christians today wield credit cards. And although the currency is no longer life and death, both scenarios embody power in a common currency of the day—the mighty sword then, and the almighty dollar now.
Amazon PrimeAir showed us that drones can carry “death from above” or, as one writer put it, “showers of blessings.” Now that Bezos has turned drones on their head, we have a chance to ask “Is technology really neutral?”
A recent study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology showed that wearing a doctor’s white lab coat increases the wearer’s attentiveness. What does that mean for all the clothes I put on?
Video venues are perhaps the clearest example of how technology is changing church. As these video campuses have spread churches out, another shift is going on—one that is no longer spatial, but psychological.