Infobesity: Having a Theology of Technology in an Information Overload Culture

If God created EVERYTHING to be “good”, then God has created technology for good.*

The Church; which is called to be the Hope of the World, has a great opportunity to use technology for good.

Why? Because, there are:

·      Over 1 trillion selfies on the net; 1 million/day and growing. This shows us that culture is sharing their lives online,

·      95% of people in North America use the internet every day (not just millennials but all generations, including my grandma),

·      85% of people use their smart phones to surf the web every day,

·      73% of millennials have smart phones as their primary device to work, communicate, and function in everyday life.

The digital age is the reality in our culture. Obviously, the Church can reach culture MORE effectively through technology.

With that said, technology can also bring up a lot of confusion. For example, if you do a google search on leadership, here are the results:

·      805,000,000 articles in 0.43 seconds,

·      11,000,000+ books found in 0.74 seconds,

·      over 30,000,000 news feeds found in 0.58 seconds.

It is great to have this information at our fingertips, but it also causes “infobesity” – being paralyzed or confused by the overwhelmingly sum of information that paralyzes us from our purposes.

With that, the Church has a great opportunity to engage people in the midst of their confusion, loneliness, and brokenness. I think we need a theology of technology that is based on three realities.

Share Information - websites, SM pages, and apps should be sharing information of the Church. Sharing information, however, is the lowest level of engaging people. We need to also,

Be Interactive – are we able to share messages/stories, Q+A, conversations, dialogue (not monologue) online? If we want to engage people, we need to have strategies of interaction in a digital age.

Ongoing Inspiration – Inspiration draws people. This level of online engagement draws on human needs for love + acceptance, not just information. Sharing stories of redemption, encouraging people with the “purpose of life”, everyday testimonies of Gods activity in their lives engages people to our church communities.

My questions are,

·      “How are you inspiring a digital age towards God + redemption?”

·      “What are some ways you can share what you are doing to engage the digital age?”

Be encouraged today. God created technology to be good. Why? So that you can share information, interact, and inspire the world to know Christ.

Start engaging people today, online. 

* What I mean with “technology” is the context of the “social media/digital age phenomenon” we are currently living in.