Biblical text messages, "godcasts" spread Word

A recent national poll found just 17 percent of adults view the local church as essential for developing faith.

Small wonder. Sitting in a pew on Sunday morning may seem old-fashioned in an era when you can watch a video re-creation of the Last Supper on your Palm or get scripture text-messaged to your cellphone.

Bored with your pastor's ramblings? Select a peppier sermon from among hundreds of "godcasts" online. Just download it to your MP3 player.

Finding the old leather Bible a bit cumbersome? A download from Olive Tree Bible Software lets you search scripture on your BlackBerry.

"At first blush, it may seem a little peculiar to connect with God on your cellphone," said Christopher Chisholm, a TV-executive-turned-digital-evangelist. He recently helped launch FaithMobile, a service that will send a daily Bible verse to your cellphone for $5.99 a month.

In this harried age, he asks, how else are you going to "get in touch with the Word?"

This digitized spirituality might seem likely to make traditional churches obsolete. But pastors are fighting back with high-tech tricks of their own.

A church in Granger, Ind., put up billboards a few months back showing a rumpled bed, entwined feet and the address www.mylamesexlife.com. The site links to an artsy minimovie with shots of a seedy motel and a man sunk in morning-after regret.

As the movie ends, viewers see the logo of Granger Community Church, which was sponsoring a series of sermons on sex, lust and porn.

Pastor Mark Beeson credits the campaign with boosting attendance 70 percent the week he gave a sermon titled "The Greatest Sex You'll Ever Have." Six weeks after the series ended, weekly church attendance still topped 6,000, up from 5,000 before the ad campaign.

"We dare not change the gospel. But the method of delivery? We better change it for each new generation," he said.

Like Beeson, many pastors leading the push for high-tech evangelizing run large, nondenominational churches. Several big-name ministries also support the effort; they include Focus on the Family, Campus Crusade for Christ, Promise Keepers, the Billy Graham Center and associations of Southern Baptists and Pentecostals.

Those groups formed the Internet Evangelism Coalition, which offers advice on using the Web to spread the gospel. The coalition's top tip: Don't sound preachy. Avoid "churchy jargon" — words like ministry, salvation, redemption, even faith. Draw in nonbelievers by presenting the church as an upbeat community of friends.

Nearly 60 percent of Protestant churches have Web sites. More than half use e-mail to communicate with their congregations — and 12 percent let visitors tithe online, says the Barna Group, which does research for ministries.

In the sanctuary itself, more than 60 percent of Protestant churches spice up services with video clips.

Andrew Careaga, a youth pastor in Salem, Mo., welcomes some of these advances, but he worries, too.

"Technology always seems to be a Faustian bargain. It encroaches on our ability to unconnect with the world and connect with God," said Careaga, the author of "e-Ministry: Connecting with the Net Generation" and two other books about the Internet.

Theologian Philip Kenneson voices another concern: When churches measure success by how often a sermon is downloaded, Christianity becomes just another consumer product.

"There's a danger that it encourages people to see the church as a service agency, there to meet their particular needs" rather than to help them serve God, he said.

"It's easy to reassure yourself that you are, in fact, a Christian because you're ... consuming Christian products," he said. "Then I don't have to love my neighbor or pray for my enemy or ... take on any of the messy, difficult demands of the gospel," said Kenneson, an associate professor at Milligan College in Tennessee and co-author of "Selling Out The Church: The Dangers of Church Marketing."

E-vangelists respond that the church, and its mission, survived the radio ministries in the '20s and the televangelism boom of the '70s, and will no doubt make it through the iPod era, too. They see the gadgets of the 21st century as a vital means of broadening Christianity's reach.

"You can sit in an ivory tower and whine all you want about 'This isn't the way it was done in 1500,' " said pollster George Barna, who runs the Barna Group. "We're here to help people. If there's a tool out there that can help us reach them, why wouldn't we use it?"

Barna's survey on religious trends turned up the statistic that only 17 percent of adults see the local church as a key factor in spiritual growth. But he has also found that such cynicism doesn't mean empty pews. In fact, the number of adults who attend weekly worship services is on the rise.