An interesting question was posed today… Is there a way a church could take advantage of Wi-Fi being made available during a Sunday morning?
Some ideas that were mentioned are for encouraging people to bring their own laptop so they could:
- * send instant emails of comments, questions about the message that we could be responded to later by staff
* search the web-site for community group info
* search the web-site for info about all ministries
* go to the blog to respond to the message or other ideas
* link up to a Bible program with different translations to follow along with the text
Here are some of my initial thoughts…
I dunno. It’s an interesting idea. And three things come to mind:
- * power plug access is limited
* will it be more of a distraction than a help?
* will is separate more than unite?
I find that I can be easily distracted myself sometimes just with my cell phone or other people’s cell phones via text messages or random phone calls.
Also, I thought about this last night during our community group meeting and wondered about it. I used an e-mail survey that members of our group had forwarded and answered earlier in the week as an ice breaker (one of those answer these questions and forward to your friends to see their answers e-mails).
I thought it would be fun to see what people remembered about each other and knew about each other. Yet as we discussed the questions and answers I felt bad for those who didn’t have e-mail or who hadn’t accessed their e-mail during the week.
It was like we had some sort of “exclusive” that they were left out of.
Same thing for Valentines Day – I felt a little bad asking, “What was your favorite V-Day gift” and having two single guys in our group not really answer.
Several people with “mates” didn’t mention a gift from their mate but I felt like the single guys were left out because they were single – and most singles tend to be anti-Valentine.
What if instead of everyone bringing their own computer we set up free e-mail accounts for members with the church’s domain?
I think that can be done pretty easily (if not free) with Google handling the mail.
Then we could set up several computers with limited access so people can search the blog, respond to email etc., before and after church.
Computers could be set up in the lobby or our meeting room and let people take 5-10 minutes to check their e-mails.
It would also give us away to communicate announcements with folks who don’t have Internet access at work or home.
I can’t find specific numbers for America but I would guess that around 25-percent of our regulars don’t have Internet access or e-mail.
We don’t want to leave them out or make them feel left out. But if we could provide a service to them then maybe they would feel even more included.
Also, the numbers with laptops may even be less.
I don’t know if we should discourage people from bringing their laptops, but I don’t know that we’d want to encourage it.
So what are your thoughts? Is your church taking advantage of Wi-Fi technology? Has your church become a community hot-spot? Why or why not?
