Americans spend more than 1/3 of their day with screens

Thanks to churchrelevance.com, I came across this article from the New York Times. A recent study has found that the average American adult spends 8.5 hours each day exposed to screens. This includes televisions, computers, cell phones, and even GPS units. Put another way, we spend more than a third of each day looking at screens.

One of the remarkable features of this study is that this average time holds steady for nearly every age group of adults. Television remains the most common form of media consumption, but this study proves that computer usage has replaced the radio as the second most common form. However, while the time spent looking at screens is roughly the same, the screens that they look at are a little different. For example, 18- to 24-year olds watch the least amount of television, at just 3.5 hours each day. This means that people in this age range are spending a full 5 hours each day of "screen time" doing things other than watching TV.

I think that there are real implications for the church here. People are using screen-based media for 1/3 of their day. We need to find tools and methods to use screens for minisitry. Too often, churches and ministries use technology for information delivery only. In other words, they have websites or Twitter or other things that serve the purpose of providing information. They are using these tools only to let people know when and where they can show up if they want to participate in ministry.

I think that we need to move beyond this. I think that we need to actually find ways to actually conduct ministry on-screen. We have to figure out how we can use the technological tools available to us so that we can use them to actually touch their lives for Jesus, not just provide information about who we are and where they can find us. When we rely on getting people to come to the church, we 0nly have a few hours each week to reach them. On the other hand, if we can effectively use on-screen culture to our benefit, we have the ability to connect with people during 1/3 of their lives, and nearly 1/2 of the time they are awake. If we don't figure out how to do this effectively, we're missing out on a real opportunity to affect the world for Jesus.

I'm not sure that I have answers to how to do this, but I know I'm actively asking the question.

Interfering with the mission

I came across an interesting article by pastor and author Dan Kimball. His church is currently in a sermon series about what a disciple of Jesus should look like. This week, they focused on describing the mission and what a missional disciple should look like. He made this interesting observation:

The more I am studying and being aware of the "church" at large I realize how easy it is to put tradition, personal preferences, style, and denominations over mission. I am not talking about historic, orthodox theology or doctrines over mission as they actually determine the need for mission. I am talking about the passion to do whatever it takes provided it does not compromise Scripture for the sake of the gospel of Jesus impacting people's lives. Personal preference or tradition, or denominations are not bad in themselves at all and have richness and beauty to them. But if they get in the way of mission, they then no longer are beautiful or rich, they can even be death.

I think that it is worth remembering that just because we always do things the same way at our churches, or our personal preferences about how to do things, are not necessarily the only way to do things. In fact, it's even possible that they are not the right way. If our preferences, or if the way our churches always do things get in the way of the mission -- which is to reach the world for Jesus -- then they stop being a beautiful or helpful thing. Instead, they become part of the problem.

There is way too much truth here...

Thanks to ASBO Jesus.

Book Review - The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne

I just finished reading The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. I had the opportunity to hear Shane speak at last November's National Youth Workers' Convention. It was very, very interesting. You can read my thoughts it in the second half of this blog entry.

It's hard to sum up Shane Claiborne in just a sentence or two. He spent the several years of his college career at Eastern University, where his mentor was Tony Campolo. After his junior year in college, he spend the summer working with Mother Teresa in India. After returning from India, he interned for a year at Willow Creek Community Church, while he finished up school at Wheaton College. After graduation, he started an intentional community in one of the roughest neighborhoods of Philadelphia, where he and a number of others try to live out what it means to be a follower of Christ.

The book has some elements of autobiography, some elements discussion about how people who claim to follow Christ should live out that claim, and some elements of a call to action to followers of Christ to take up the cause of the poor and disenfranchised around the world.

Shane talks about how Jesus was a radical. Jesus preached a message that was at odds with what both society and the religious leaders of the day said was important. Jesus called people to live a kind of life that was radically different than what everyone else was trying to live. It was a call to live a life of radical grace and radical love -- a life where you loved your enemies, you turned the other cheek when you were struck, you forgave people who did nothing to seek forgiveness, and you sacrificially helped those in need. It was a message and a way of living that was opposed to the powers that existed, and led to persecution of Jesus and those who followed him.

Shane also speaks against the merger of God, Country and Capitalism that he believes has occurred in American Christianity. He points out how the actions of a Superpower are often inconsistent with the values that Jesus taught. Similarly, global capitalism (as it is operated) can exploit the poor and disenfranchised, and it doesn't match up with the economic system that can be seen in the early church. Shane uses this discussion to ask us to take a look at how we live our day-to-day lives and to see if it matches up with the way that Jesus lived his life.

The Irresistible Revolution raises some very good issues. It asks us to look at whether or not we are really living as a follower of Jesus and are doing the things that Jesus did. It is appropriate to point out that the church hasn't always done a very good job of taking care of the poor and disenfranchised, whether they were already a part of the church or not.

While I believe that Shane raises a number of good issues, I don't agree with everything that he has to say. My biggest disagreement with him is probably this: I think he overemphasizes serving with and among the poor. There were times when reading the book that I felt like he was arguing that the focus of Christ followers should be entirely on the poor and the disenfranchised. I can't agree with him to that extent. When Jesus commanded me to love my neighbor as myself, he didn't put any socio-economic qualifier on that. Certainly the person living in poverty in the inner city of Chicago qualifies as my neighbor under Jesus' definition. But so does the professional making several hundred thousand dollars a year who lives in my neighborhood. I need to demonstrate the love of Jesus to both of them.

While I don't agree with everything that Shane Claiborne has to say, The Irresistible Revolution is worth reading. It certainly make you think about what it means to really live out a faith in Jesus Christ.

God's Eye View

Check out these pictures. They are from a very cool art series showing several key biblical moments from "google earth view," or a "God's eye view" if you prefer. These pieces are the work of an artistic group from Sydney called The Glue Society. It should be noted that they are not necessarily trying to present a Christian world view. Here is a description of the work from one of the creators:

“We like to disorientate audiences a little with all our work. And with this piece we felt technology now allows events which may or may not have happened to be visualized and made to appear dramatically real,” say The Glue Society’s James Dive. “As a method of representation satellite photography is so trusted, it has been interesting to mess with that trust.”

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden




Noah's Ark




Moses Parting the Red Sea




The Crucifixion


Thanks to Creative Review via Marko Oestreicher from Youth Specialties for the pictures.

Poll showing people are leaving the church

In this article, James from Think Christian discusses a new Gallup poll that seems to confirm what many of us have already suspected. There has been a dramatic decline in the number of people in the United States who identify themselves as "Christian" and who regularly attend church.

In 1948, 91% of Americans identified themselves as either Protestant (69%) or Catholic (22%). Today, 82% of Americans think of themselves as Christian. However, that 82% includes 8% who identify themselves as "other Christian faiths" that many people would consider either unorthodox or simply non-Christian. So Protestants (51%) and Catholics (23%) now only make up 74% of the population, which represents a 17% decline in the last 60 years. Additionally, Protestants have gone from representing more than 2/3 of the U.S. population to now barely constituting a majority.

Church membership has also taken a dramatic decline. In 1937, 73% of Americans were church members. As recently as 1999 that number was 70%. Just 8 years later, that number has fallen to 63-65%. That is an 8-10% decline in just 8 years. Wow.

And claiming church membership does not mean people are attending church regularly. Only 32% of Americans say that they attend church every week. Put another way, just less than half of those who claim church membership actually show up at church every week.

I know that a lot of people have known on some level that there seem to be fewer people claiming to be Christians and going to church than there used to be. This survey helps to give some substance to those feelings. I think that the dramatic decrease over the last decade is particularly interesting.

The culture and the mental outlook and framework of the people in the United States is changing. Who Jesus is and what he has done is a constant - it never changes (see Hebrews 13:8). However, because people change, the way that present the message of Jesus has to change, or else the church will find itself irrelevant to the people around us. Studies like this should stir us to think about ways to change so that we can be more effective at impacting the world around us for Jesus.

Best sermon illustration ever

I stumbled across this article this morning. A pastor in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, which is about 20 miles from Cleveland, was preaching about the Parable of the Talents. In the parable, the master, who was leaving on a trip, gave his servants money based on their abilities. Two of the servants were rewarded for going out and using their money to gain more money for the master. The third servant was punished for simply burying his money so that none of it would be lost. One of the principles of the story is that we should use the gifts that God gives us for his benefit.

The pastor in Ohio wanted his congregation to live out the parable. So he borrowed $40,000 from some anonymous donors. At the end of the sermon, he gave each adult $50 and each child $10, and told them to go out and use the money to earn more money. In 7 weeks, they would collect the money, and everything about the initial $40,000 would go to missions. If people were uncomfortable with this, they had the option of simply returning the money (with no punishment, like third servant in the parable).

It made people think long and hard about their talents, and what they could do. But people came up with extremely creative ideas. They ranged from a pilot who rented air time and sold rides to people to teenagers who pooled their money and made fleece baby blankets, to a 9-year-old who made origami and sold the pieces from a stand on his street.

At the end of the 7 weeks, the church collected the money. The congregation had raised $38,195 above the original loan. And money is still coming in, because some people extended their projects in order to finish them, and others are still receiving orders for the ideas they came up with. But the church will tell you that it's not just about the money. This project made people really think about and understand what their talents and interests are and how they can use them for God.

Too often the Bible is nothing more than just words on a page. It is one thing to intellectually understand the principles that a story in the Bible teaches. But the real power of the Bible comes when we actually put those things into practice. Doing that makes a positive change in our world for God.