Have you ever wanted to ask a question during a sermon but couldn’t? Has a preacher ever said something that you didn’t quite understand? Has your mind wondered and needed an update? Well for any of these three or for numerous other reasons you wish their was more interaction or dialogue between the preacher and you the audience, then you may find our idea interesting.
Our leadership team has decided to open up a chat room during our weekly worship service Encounter. We believe that God works through community and that each of us can play a role in helping one another to understand the word of God. We see the reason for a corporate worship service as a method of glorifying God through worshiping as one, and participating in the word of God. We realize that we live in an “everyone thinks for him or herself” world. So we have decided to project a chat room that every but the speaker can see. During her or his message the audience can interact with one another through an internal conversation. So if you have a question, didn’t hear clearly, don’t understand, need to catch up, or just disagree, then you will have a way to get involved. During the message a few of our leaders will be monitoring the chat room to see what if any hot topics or issues arose and at the end of the sermon we will review them together. This will help the teaching to become a dialogue rather than a monologue.
Our hope is that by allowing students to participate in a chat room that it will be easier for them to engage. We realize that many will be tempted to check out facebook or im with outher friends but we believe that it is worth the risk. We are not naive enough to think that just because they don’t have a computer in front of them that their minds are not already wondering. Where does you mind wonder during a sermon? We also realize that our audience will need to be mature and respectful but we are praying that this will not be a problem.
Church is a community of believers coming together to glorify God and build one another up. We hope that this will give us an even more interactive way to do so. Jesus said that if we hide our talents He will take them from us. We see a talent the same as a tool, so we’re going to take the risk and pray that God will be faithful.
Sounds like a great idea, there’s far too little interaction going in large group settings. Let us know how it goes.
great idea jeff, i compliment your leadership team. I’d like to hear how this is going and how it actually plays out…
we’ve gone to text messages down here. students with questions text them in to the ppt guy and he puts some of them on the screen at the end of the night for a little q and a with the speaker. it’s worked great so far….