The changing nature of worship – phones in church by @vahva

– October 12, 2012Posted in: Digidisciple

Some of you will know that I started training to be a vicar this week at Cranmer Hall in Durham. We had an interesting first session on preaching in which we were asked in small groups to create tableaux of ‘my morning congregation’. What struck me about this was that out of 6 tableau scenes we created, 5 had a person on their mobile phone as one of the congregation members.

We discussed each scene created and some questions arose about the mobile phone users:

is she texting a friend?
is he reading the bible on his phone?
is she tweeting the sermon?
is he playing angry birds?

The answer is, it could be any of the above! One of the lecturers, Prof David Wilkinson commented that 5 years ago when they did the same exercise there were no mobile phones involved. Our Sunday morning experience in church is changing rapidly around us.

How do you feel about the use of mobile phones in church? My feeling is that we should take our cue from Romans 14 and ensure that nothing we do negatively affects a brother or sister’s worship:

Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a person to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble.It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall. – Romans 14: 20-21

Here Paul is talking about problems in the Roman church around food laws – those who ate food that had been dedicated to idols and those who chose not to. Those of us that use our smartphones for more than just texting and calling and who use bible apps and tweet know that this is good and edifying – ‘clean’ if you like. However, that does not mean that we should not be aware that those around us in church may not know that and may interpret our use of a mobile phone as disrespectful or distracting. I wouldn’t want to distract people in church by checking my phone to read the Greek on my bible app if it made all the old ladies behind me tut with disapproval – taking the focus off the preaching of the word and onto my ‘bad’ behaviour.

Perhaps the answer is that if there are enough people in church who are using mobile phones for the right reasons in church could share what they are doing – perhaps in a short interview with the leader of the service to make it clear to everyone that that is what they are doing. The danger comes in jumping to conclusions about what someone is doing in church – you don’t know if they are engaging in worship or doing something else.

I tend to err on the side of caution and don’t get my phone out in church. This is a good discipline for me as well as it is virtually an extension of my arm and so it’s good for me to switch it off now and again.

What do you think? Do you use your mobile in church? Have you had a reaction to your use of phones in church? Let us know in the comments!

Tags: Church, mobile phone, phones, Romans, services, Worship

About Bryony Taylor

Enthusiast for learning, technology, Christian faith and life! Ordinand in the Church of England - training at Cranmer Hall, Durham.

david b

Is there a difference between using a mobile phone and writing down notes from the sermon? Is one more acceptable than the other?
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=656235160 Bex Lewis
  
  That’s exactly what I just said on Facebook & thought should poke here too! Pre-phone – when bored, easy to write shopping/to-do lists, doodle … it’s the human factor
Thea C

I think you’re right that quite a lot of information/education would be needed for the use of phones to be entirely accepted in your average mixed age and culture congregation (especially since most/many congregations don’t consider it usual to take notes or refer to a bible during worship.) Personally I think there is in practice (tho maybe not in theory) a difference between a notebook and a phone, in the same way that there is in practice a difference between facebook and voice calls despite the shouts of ‘that’s what they said about the telephone’ every time anyone expresses concern about the wider effects of social media.

a) it’s easier to see what someone is doing with a notebook,
b) phone have more potential distractions both for the person using it (games, social media, just looking at that email that just came in) and the people around (noises, backlight, vibration)
c) we currently have different relationships to our phones and bits of paper, and they have different effects on social dynamics. I think Miranda Hart hit on something when she had TIlly saying ‘bear with, bear with’ and everyone else freezing when Tilly got a text message – phones introduce a third person into a situation, and can create a temporary distance – while the person is attending to their phone they aren’t attending in the same way to the people they’re with or what’s happening around them.
- http://www.facebook.com/sally.rush.106 Sally Rush
  
  I understand what’s being said, but I think that we need to think about younger people too. I think it’s exciting that young people are downloading bible apps onto their phones and getting back to the idea you take your bible to church with you. The fact they are downloading the apps to have their bible in church also means they have the bible with them pretty much 24/7. That’s something exciting and we need to be careful not to be so concerned with not upsetting the older generation that we stop this trend. Perhaps getting an people to talk about the what their bible looks like, and getting somebody to pass round their phone is one way to do it.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=656235160 Bex Lewis

Another comment on Facebook re ‘but it’s OK to ask kids to turn their phones off in the cinema’ … how similar are the two – Bryony has another post for this: http://bryonytaylor.com/2011/05/29/do-you-go-to-church-to-consume-or-participate/
Sandgroper

I don’t use my phone, but I do use my iPod, and it seems most people can’t tell the difference. I find it very useful, as I find it helpful to read the bible as well as listen to it. i think it is acceptable for people to have a bible in church and my bible (at least three versions) just happens to be on my iPod. I have also used it for the Strongs concordance. I did use it one to look up the Oxford English Dictionary as there was a word in one of the hymns that I didn’t know and I didn’t want to sing something I didn’t understand.
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http://twitter.com/changingworship Robb Sutherland

I was told off for using a phone to make a note of something inspiring that a lecturer said five years ago… In the Leech Hall. The times thy re a changing.

Three years ago I was rather grumpily handed a copy of a “real bible” when I was leading a bible study. I was wearing my collar at the time.

Yesterday at an impromptu bible study the guy running it kept pointing out that no one thought to bring a bible with them even though I was clearly facing about with an iPad.
http://twitter.com/StevenPape balaam

Tweeting the sermon. Good idea, I’ll have to try that.
Pingback: Ecclesiology and Media Practices: Will Gadgets, Twitter and Anti-Tech Attitudes Divide Churches? (@Byers_Andy)
http://twitter.com/keithrileywhitt Keith R-W

I love using my phone in church. I find tweeting the sermon helps me come back to it later. Because its 140 characters my notes are concise and easily reviewable. i can tag my tweets and then come back to that later on. if your at a bigger venue you can follow what other people are saying so that you gain an extra perspective on the message you are hearing.
If I have pen and paper, eventually I just draw pictures…

What fascinates me is that we acknowledge times are changing but still would rather have people put their phones away. It concerns me that we can live in a culture as immediate and consumable as this and yet the majority of our Churches are reluctant and in many cases scared to embrace it.??
I was at a conference in march and we had a twitter feed searching the hashtags. A man there 50 ish asked what I was doing and I told him I was tweeting. He asked me to stop and I said no. I said that I found it helpful and he actually shouted at me. He told me that there was no point to social media and that anyone that uses it must be mentally ill (His words). I asked why he felt like that and he just said I was pathetic and simple. I Got a little bit narked and asked him to pray for my immediate and necessary healing,. but he moved seat. I feel sorry for that man because he obviously misunderstands social media, but I wonder if attitude, albeit extreme, was reflective of what the wider church feels? As this distressed him enough to distract him from his worship and had he asked a little bit nicer, I would have put my phone away (my ipad would have stayed put though) but where does that leave my engagement with worship. If not having digital access to the word of God distracts me then shouldn’t he encourage it? It is a shame that we presume that an individual is not engaged with the service just because they have a device in their hands.

Many churches do have some understanding of the digital world, that’s why most of us have websites and upload the sermons/podcasts but that seems to be the limit of it. if we never tell people that our sites are there how will they ever be listend to or read etc..That’s where social media can really help out. it can literally deliver the message about your message about the good news and as we are all called to take the gospel to the very ends of the earth, with social media we can actually do this from the pews. With the right set up, we can do it within 5 minutes of the service ending and have the web page display all tweets that relate to the sermon in chronological order.