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It’s Time For Worship, Please Turn ON Your Cell Phone
It seems that whenever we are constantly being reminded to turn off our cell phones when we go to public places like movie theaters, schools, and church. This weekend at National Youth Workers Convention at one of our general sessions we were asked to do exactly the opposite. There were several times that we were specifically asked to turn our phones on.
The first time was one of the coolest prayer experiences I have ever been a part of. The speaker would say something like, “Maybe you feel like you need to be filled up this week” and then asked those that agreed with the statement to turn their phone display on. What happened is that in the darkness we were able to see that there were others with the same struggles, while it still gave some sense of ambiguity. Each time a statement was made, thousands of lights appeared across the stadium.
The second was during a general session where we had three speakers. Each one was given 15 minutes to talk, and then we took 5 minutes to discuss what they spoke about. During that 5 minutes we were encouraged to text message questions to a number on the screen. At the end of the 5 minutes they used those questions for a Q&A session.
The final use of the phone was ongoing through twitter. Through monitoring twitter comments and sending my own I was able to interact with people sitting in various areas of the worship service, get their thoughts and respond. I was even able to follow one of the services we did not attend, getting photos, comments, sermon notes and more. (follow me on twitter @rgmmusic)
These all worked great in a large conference setting. What I am wondering though is how they could work in a smaller church setting of 100-500 people. Or would I be asking for trouble by encouraging people to turn their phones on during worship.
What ways have you used cell phones during your worship service?
What would concern you most about encouraging your congregation to turn ON their phone?
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I loved this part of the convention. Could it be done in a smaller context? I think some elements could… certainly texting in your Q’s would be fun. The rest of it, I really think that it wouldn’t work as well in a small environment… especially the part you’ve got here. I dunno, give it a try and let me know!
[...] year I wrote about my experience at National Youth Workers Convention where we used our cell phones for one type of interactive [...]
[...] more ways we used the cell phone during the NYWC, visit this post at Fork in the Road Music. « Seriously Ridiculous! YS One Day [...]