{"id":432,"date":"2008-12-26T20:08:25","date_gmt":"2008-12-27T02:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/crawler\/?p=432"},"modified":"2008-12-26T20:08:25","modified_gmt":"2008-12-27T02:08:25","slug":"technology-for-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2008\/12\/26\/technology-for-the-church\/","title":{"rendered":"technology for the church"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/lifestyle\/faith\/36749224.html?page=2&amp;c=y\">Minneapolis Star-Tribune<\/a> posted a podcast today about holiday spirituality, which included a discussion of new work from Mark Chaves, a Duke University sociologist studying churches in the United States. Technology is the opiate of the masses&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>One of the biggest changes in churches over the past decade is a huge increase in the use of computer technology to keep in touch with current members and to reach out to new ones, according to a Duke University study that was released &#8212; appropriately enough &#8212; in the online version of the journal Sociology of Religion.<\/p>\n<p>An average of 10,000 church websites are being launched every year, according to the National Congregations Study, Wave II, a follow-up to a 1998 study. In the earlier study only a handful of churches used e-mail to communicate with members. Now 60 percent are doing it.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers conducted interviews with 1,500 congregations representing a cross-section of religious traditions. For the follow-up study, they went back to the same churches.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is the first study that has tracked change over time in a nationally representative sample of congregations,&#8221; said Mark Chaves, a professor of sociology, religion and divinity and the lead researcher. &#8220;We&#8217;ve never been able to do that before. This research tells us what is changing and what is staying the same.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/lifestyle\/faith\/36749224.html?page=2&amp;c=y\">full story<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Minneapolis Star-Tribune posted a podcast today about holiday spirituality, which included a discussion of new work from Mark Chaves, a Duke University sociologist studying churches in the United States. Technology is the opiate of the masses&#8230; One of the biggest changes in churches over the past decade is a huge increase in the use [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[38,116,42,12],"class_list":["post-432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-methods","tag-networks","tag-religion","tag-technology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":433,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432\/revisions\/433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}