Has anyone seen my Ebenezer?

I am not a cook, I enjoy fixing food for my family, but cooking is not something I do regularly. The one thing that I do cook is breakfast. Last weekend, I decided to make pancakes. I got everything together, when they were finally ready, I called out "Pancakes Are Ready" and this little voice in the back of my head finished the old hymn by singing "...Come to the feast...".

That got me to thinking about the old hymns that I grew up with. A few years ago, I went on a men's retreat to see a baseball game in Atlanta. We stopped at a small local Church on Sunday Morning. One of the first songs they sang "Bringing In The Sheaves". It was a little bit jarring, I had not sung that particular song in a very long time. I can remember thinking as a kid, "What's A Sheave?", if we are bringing them in? where are they?

Even today one of my favorite hymns is "Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing", here is verse 2:

Sorrowing I shall be in spirit,
Till released from flesh and sin,
Yet from what I do inherit,
Here Thy praises I’ll begin;
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.

So what's an Ebenezer anyway? (answer here) Do I have one? Why am I raising it? I loved the song, but did it really speak to me? not really.

My point here is....Jesus spoke to his time, I am amazed that whatever setting he was in, he was able to teach. On an open hillside he uses birds and flowers to speak of God's love and care. When speaking to farmers, he uses the concepts of planting and harvesting. When talking to fishermen, he talks about sorting a catch.

Christians now must speak to our time. Singing songs that use King James english will not speak to this generation. Many of the normal tools that Churches use to teach and communicate, will not speak to this generation. We must keep up with the times, we must adapt.

Here are some examples:

In my day, the big thing was to have a phone in your room. Today it must be a cell phone. However, phones are not to be talked on, they are used to text. How many youth groups are using this technology to communicate? How many Churches still have a phone tree?

Churches spend thousands of dollars in postage to mail bulletins to members. There is a certain segment of the population that will always expect a weekly bulletin. However, a growing group doesn't want information once/week, they want it as soon as it becomes available. Sending an email everytime an event occurs is complicated, however, RSS (the format used by Bloglines and Google Reader to 'subscribe' to a blog) would allow members to view the Church's information very inexpensively and quickly.

Churches are still struggling with putting together websites. Don't get me wrong, web sites are good, (I build them for a living) but the traditional Church web site is difficult to manage and goes out of date quickly. Using pre-built technologies like blogs or Facebook is much easier to maintain and keep current.

It's not just about Churches, individual Christians can do a lot using technology.

Blogs are cool, even though I've only been blogging for a short period of time, I've been able to see the readership grow. The thing I get most excited about is when I see that someone has reached my blog through some random internet search. This post that I did last August has gotten several hits from people searching for information about Euler's Identity. It is exciting to me that they found my post that said that it was proof that God exists. Did it have an effect? I won't know until the last day, but in my mind, the seed was planted somewhere.

Social networks are becoming very popular with young people. I have an account on Facebook and MySpace, I'm looking for people that I grew up with, there are not many, but, there are thousands and thousands of young people, college age or younger are Churches using this technology to speak to this generation?

Yeah, I'm a technology guy, I'm probably a bit myopic as far as this topic goes, but gracious, are Christians struggling to communicate the message in this day and age? Twelve guys were able to communicate the message with the whole world on foot. With what we have today, we should be able to tell the whole world instantly.

The most condemning item on this topic is...Satan knows how to use technology. (Click Here for some statistics).

This post has not turned out the way that I had planned. I really meant to just talk about the songs that we sing....how do we speak to the younger generation. It's got me thinking now though....hmmmm....