What year is it anyway?

Have you looked at new cars recently? You can get one with Bluetooth, a sunroof, and flat-tire proof. It seems like they come with everything…On-Star, hybrid engines, heated and cooled seats, keyless starting systems…but there’s one accessory that’s becoming harder and harder to find…a cassette player. You can’t buy a car that comes standard with a cassette player, you have to special order it…and it won’t be cheap. In fact, you can’t buy a cassette player at your local electronics store any more either.

So, if they’ve quit selling mechanisms to play cassettes (for the most part)…WHY ARE CHURCHES STILL MAKING CASSETTES? And if that ruffles your feathers, you might want to close your ears for this next part. I think we (churches) should consider not making CDs in the near future, too!

It seems like churches are always 10 years behind the technology curve. Why is that? We should be using technology to engage people where they’re at…not where they were 10 years ago. Today more than 10% of Americans own an iPod or MP3 player; that figure doubles for those under the age of 30. Over the next couple of years, I anticipate that these numbers will increase sharply. As this number grows and the process of adding audio files to your church website and iTunes gets easier, the amount of physical audio media your church produces should decrease significantly.

DISCLAIMER: I understand that there are shut-ins and those in retirement centers that are accustomed to receiving a weekly cassette from their church, and I say “keep delivering.” But as that generation fades, those technologies will also fade and you’ll be behind the ball again. Up until last year, our church was still providing cassette tapes to shut-ins. I was amazed/appalled at that when I came on board. We remedied that by buying a few inexpensive portable CD players. Now they get the sermon each week on CD. The next step will be to provide them with iPods and set up an automated Podcast download for them…you think I’m kidding?

People don’t like change, but if you could begin to acclimate your congregation to getting their sermon audio from your church website or from iTunes, you could save your Media Ministry a lot of time, energy and even money. Over the next year, we will be more intentional about making our congregation aware of the availability of our online audio files and Podcasts. I hope you’ll do the same.