Worshiping in the Matrix: technology in communication, culture, and the church

Yes, we accept registrations at the door! Swing by around 8:30am and we’ll get you all squared away.

People worship. Whether we’re talking about money, work, sex, drugs, rock n roll, or the Triune God. At this conference, we will reflect upon how technology and social media help foster or hinder authentic communion with the Triune God and community with the church and culture at large. We will use worship as a seminal case study, both because many churches frame their community around the “worship experience” and because there is a sense in which all individuals worship someone or something.

Subjects addressed at the conference will include the “fourth wall” which separates leader from participant, forcing us to rethink our models of worship relative to technology. We will ask whether the church’s use of technology seeks simply to improve consumer cultural idolatry (mere entertainment) or if it causes us to enter into the Triune God’s presence corporately. We will examine the double-edged sword of technology and social media, which enables churches to establish satellite campuses – a practice whose theological impact is bound up with our implementation. Further, we will examine how technology impacts our relationships, our authenticity, and our capacity for intimacy.

Our speakers will consider how the church and culture have historically stewarded its resources, dating back to ancient forms of technology. Stories will be shared of utilizing space either for or in spite of public missional engagement.

Keynote speaker, Quentin Schultze, is a leading voice on media and its place in service to Christian worship and mission, as well as a prolific author. Some of his recent titles include High-Tech Worship? Using Presentational Technologies Wisely; Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age; Communicating for Life: Christian Stewardship in Community and Media; and many more. Dr. Schultze will help us discern how best to proceed so that we can love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. He will articulate that technology, like the Sabbath, is made for humans – not the other way around. As actors in the theater of redemption, Dr. Schultze will exhort us to be on guard that we do not let technology use us, but that we use it in the church’s worship experience and in the broader culture of creation.

The Institute for the Theology of Culture: New Wine, New Wineskins of Multnomah Biblical Seminary at Multnomah University brings a theological-cultural vision to this subject. New Wine leaders Dr. Paul Louis Metzger (director), Dr. Brad Harper (associate director), and Dr. Robert Redman (dean of Multnomah Biblical Seminary) will provide biblical and theological underpinnings for the church’s wise stewardship of its various means of communication. They will demonstrate how such resources can be used for the building up of the Christian community and its mission in the world.

Join New Wine, New Wineskins and Quentin Schultze for this educational conference November 5, 2011 from 9:00am – 4:30pm at Imago Dei Community (1302 SE Ankeny, Portland). Registration is available here. General admission tickets are $20. Student tickets are $5. For more information, email newwine@multnomah.edu.

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