The traditional image of the church and its clergy as encouraged by the Media make it seem unlikely to use computers extensively, especially when the Rev. Jim Peasboro, is reported in the Times by Ruth Gledhill as claiming in his book, The Devil in the Machine, that one in ten computers in America could be home to an evil spirit.
However Brian Reid, formerly of PARC, says, "Historically there has never been an issue of useful technology not being widely adopted. If it is genuinely good, and you don't adopt it, your children or your grandchildren will". Anglicans OnLine. So it is encouraging to read that the Church Computers Users Group, (CCUG), formed in 1982, now has about 2,000 members so today's church rather than our descendants are interesting in utilising computers.
Interested in seeing what this meant in practice, and stimulated by producing a report for my Open University studies, I have looked at five areas where computers could effect working practices in the church.
In the church, consisting of separate scattered parishes, isolation of clergy is a problem as is the time taken travelling to meetings. Developments in Information and Communication Technology, (ICT), can provide potential solutions: -
Email. The Church in Wales lists of the 100 of our Diocesan Clergy only 25 with email as yet. So as a communication media its value is patchy.
Mailing Lists can provide the support of virtual communities such as 'St. Sams', in America with about 500 members according to its web site or in the UK 'Christians on the Internet', (COIN) These are vibrant and alive groups, but obviously only cater for those interested.
Meetings via the Internet. In our Diocese we can spend three hours travelling for a one hour meeting. A more effective system would be to use Conferencing.
The potential is there to exploit variations of electronic communication to overcome the isolation of distance but it needs a higher level of involvement before it can really influence existing practices to any great extent.
Desk Top Publishing (DTP).
For parish magazines, service sheets and posters the choice used to be the vicar's Roneo duplicator and the Sunday School felt pens or the expensive professional printers. Now however the PC unleashes the creative powers within people. Specialist applications to allow the Church to produce professional products have been created: -
Specialised clip Art is offered by companies such as Data Developments and Christian Clip Art
Revised orders of service appear every decade or so. Now this Liturgical Material is supplied in a form ready to DTP, at least in the Church of England! Complete services such as the new Initiation Services, and 'Visual Liturgy', which is a service book on a CD ROM which makes full use of electronic publishing to produce competed services.
However the utilisation of these resources depend upon the ability of the individual parish. There is a great difference between a highly equipped and staffed parish office or the vicar on his own without up to date facilities.
Data Handling.
Like any organisation the church needs to handle addresses, details of its members,(customers), and statistics of use, (attendance). It also needs to deal with its finances.
Computers are used centrally to hold some information and to make it available. The Church in Wales has a comprehensive data base of clergy and parishes well cross linked on its Web site, but this does not exist, at least on-line, for most English Dioceses and Crockfords is still using 'dial-in' technology for on-line access. There is no attempt to move towards any unified system for a Diocese. This I believe is because of the diverse nature of the church.
For individual parishes specialist programs are available such as those from Data Developments,to hold and handle extensive amounts of data in ways likely to be relevant to the church. Also the Data Registration Act now exempts church use to make it easier. In the smaller parishes much of the record keeping and finance is handled by voluntary amateurs and the willingness to help out takes precedence over ability with computers.
Education.
One of the primary functions of the church is to educate people about the content of the Christian story. In this area CD ROMs are widely available such as those from Exousia Christian Software The Church itself is involved in the production of resources, such as Faith Quest,
Another area is the placing of resources on the Internet to be widely available and the creation of specialist web sites such as that of the National Society for Church Schools.
This supports the work of the church in schools, due to the many incentives to increase the number of multimedia computers available and the use of the Internet. In a church and Sunday school context the lack of equipment will relegate such resources to the supporting role of preparation rather than being used with a group of students.
Internet.
The Church as a whole is not really sure how it wants to utilise the Internet as illustrated by the note of caution struck in recent sermons by the Archbishops of Canterbury, and York, The Church produced a report, 'Cybernauts Awake!' Christians who regularly utilise the Internet were very scathing such as 'The Ship of Fools' (Enter Ship of Fools on the search box when this link is used.) Others such as Brian Reed, formerly of PARC, wrote their own reports, . Andrew Brown writing in the New Statesman on 29th November 1999 sees the cause of this dispute as "An official report from the Church of England which nowhere mentioned the people who had
. been getting on and doing things online before the Internet had impinged at all on official Christianity." Andrew Brown goes on to say, "There is a wider moral about the way in which organisations of any sort react to the Internet
. the Internet makes it easy to outflank them
. This is very good news for voluntary organisations which are still full of vital willpower, and very bad news indeed for those who rely on habit." I have given a more full account of this fascinating exchange on my debate page.
These comments sum up the cautious official approach. There is a Church of England Web site, created last year, but in contrast Anglicans Online was started in 1994 it claims to have more than 6,000 links, to have registered 'anglican.org' for use for the Anglican church and to be getting 18,000 visitors a week. There is an Anglican Yellow Pages produced by one Diocese There are sites for 12 of the 85 parishes in our Diocese which seems about average. The Church Times has been on-line since 1997,
Use is slowly growing but it is led by the enthusiasts rather than controlled by those in positions of power.
Conclusion
The church does work in areas where computers can make a considerable impact assisting in communication, production of printed materials, handling its records and assisting it in education and the advertising of its gospel to the world. As shown above, resources have been developed to enable this. However the impact of computers is sporadic. In some locations working practices have changed greatly, in others they remain largely untouched.
This is due in part to the very diverse nature of the church and the hesitation expressed centrally as reflected by the comments of the two Archbishops. With no overall central leadership a major factor then becomes the extent to which the use of computers is part of the normal activities of the individual parishes. No such statistics exist but by looking, as I have on my statistics page, at how many churches have bothered to add services to the Church Search page supplied by the church of England, for every church we see that only 25% have bothered. That means that for 75% of parishes full utilisation of computers is still outside their experience.
The way forward must be to use fully the abilities of computers to modify existing working practices to the benefit of all. However this will come more through the stimulus and encouragement of enthusiast like Brian Reid, who are represented by the 1 in 4 of parishes utlising their Internet pages, than through lengthy moral debates like that envisalaged by the Board for Social Responsibility.
References.
Many of the links within the report are to the relevant areas of large sites below are links to the home pages.