The Use of Technology in Discipleship

The strength of technology, its problems and potential deserves our deliberate reflection. Technology can be an aid or a hindrance to our personal and communal spiritual education, by steering our wishes and influencing our experience of time. Technology is often characterized by speed and efficiency, with the promise that our lives will be made easier because we can move and communicate faster and more effectively. These promises are valuable and assume that convenience is better than effort, and speed is better than slow. Technologies that emphasize speed and efficiency can prevent us from valuing experiences that take time and energy, which are only rewarding if they are carried out slowly and with difficulty. The loving relationships and the type of community that Christ promotes are not in line with this emphasis on ease and speed.

The speed of technology is against the patience needed for the Christian faith, in a way that resembles how an emphasis on effectiveness can stand in the way of obedience. We must encourage each other to slow down and disconnect from technology to invest time in people. What we find in the Christian community is a depth and richness that contrasts sharply with the fragmentation and decoupling that we risk when we are looking for fulfillment in technology. The church must remind itself that technology itself is no place to find meaning and fulfillment. Technology may or may not be useful and we will not always see immediately whether it is useful or harmful. We must ensure that technology does not become another idol or any other way to be unhealthy in the goals of the empire.

Our attention span has been redefined and redefined by the speed of our digital technology and our immediate access to information. The Greek term pharmakon, means both poison and healing, something that both helps and hinders. Pharmakon helps us to see technology as: it increases the availability of valuable information and also reduces our attention span. The church must be accurately aware that young people are formed by aspects of mass culture that are more compelling and hold the attention more effectively than the forming forces of the church.

A consequence of technology is that people can create calendars and register the passage of time. In following the passage of days and weeks and months and years, technology places us in a way of being in which we run the risk of focusing more on measurement and consistency than on the quality and depth of our experiences over time. Chronos and Kairos are helpful here. Where chronos is measured and quantitative time, kairos is immeasurable and qualitative time. We can illustrate the difference by pointing to the experience of looking at the clock as the end of the workday approaches, in contrast to the experience of revered meditation or contemplation.

The Church must assess the role of technology in the formation of people and then develop approaches to discipleship that counter the negative influences of technology and at the same time strengthens the positive influences of technology. Specific issues that can be addressed include: bias in the news media, porn addiction, changing definitions of friendship (given Facebook) and the role of technology in worship. Intentional conversation about the role of technology in our lives can bring new attention practices, such as limiting the use of mobile phones to facilitate connection experiences in the present moment, or practicing attention and presence of the mind during worship. The church must also respond to the positive roles that technology can play, especially in the field of communication.

According to Maxwell Kennel, McKee and Tapp (2013) suggest only three types of people in the Church's network. Those who stay at entry level follow what the church is doing, but rarely participate in the life of the church, online or face to face. The second group is identified as "the people who have regular contact with others in the church, real relationships are the third group, they are identified as those who meet face-to-face in addition to online. " McKee and Tapp present this third type of people is the purpose of using social media. If this third type is the primary user of social media, how will a discipleship strategy involve the first two types? McKee and Tapp (2013) suggest that churches consider using social media, questions and answers three primary questions: (a) what kind of church are you? (b) What is your focus? Is it discipleship, evangelism, service, and so forth? (c) What are your vision, message and values? Until the church knows who they are known, they know their mission and core values and know their focus as a church, the use of social media simply becomes another tool that may not be in line with the church, possibly leading to the established goals.

We try to reproduce this non-verbal communication in messages by utilizing images for our feelings. The greater part of this layer of correspondence is just lost. In up close and personal discussion this pressure can be chipped away at all the more effectively and through conflict. God made us as various and special individuals and, because of these distinctions, we can expect struggle in our assemblies. Email is not appropriate for working through these contentions in God-respecting ways. In an assembly with lower levels of training or salary, the issue of Internet access and PC capability would be issue. Data should likewise go through the notice, through announcements, bulletins, and through physical mails. As Christians we are a people with a message, and with the end goal to be reliable stewards of that message we can't indiscriminately grasp each medium offered to us by the mechanical framework We have to painstakingly perceive the manners by which diverse bits of the innovative framework work for or against our living as gospel-formed networks so we may live dependably as the general population of God.