In my experience, technology has had a positive impact on my faith, and has been a significant factor in allowing my church to grow to a global scale. I was born into the Catholic Church, and have always had a strong belief in God and in the Christian belief system. However, as I got older I began to feel a disconnection with the Catholic teachings. There was no sense of community in the church, and I felt that I was drifting further with personal faith as I grew more and more disillusioned by the Catholic system.
When I was twelve, my parents made the decision to move our family to a different church. Our attendance to the Catholic Church had been slipping, and though I was of age, I had not yet completed my sacraments as I should have. My mother had seen a Hillsong service on television, and found out that there was a local campus of the church in Campbelltown. I remember being extremely sceptical; would I like this church? It was an experiment for all of us, but we had a feeling, right then and there before we even stepped foot into the building that this place would be something special. We already felt a connection with the church at a micro level and were hoping to develop this connection at a meso level.
It was July 2014, and I remember the culture shock as I first walked into the service. Screens hung up outside in the foyer advertising the latest events happening in and around the church. There was a sound room dedicated to the staff and volunteers who ran the service, coordinating the sounds as well as the lights and the screens.
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There were screens behind the platform, adorning with lights, which projected the faces of the worship singers and of the preachers for those at the back of the auditorium. Sometimes, we streamed in live to our senior pastor wherever he was, be it Sydney, New York, or even Paris. The connectedness of the church through technology was evident, and I began to wonder how much of this use of technology contributed to Hillsong’s position as one of the fastest growing Christian churches in the world.
It didn’t take long before we assimilated into the community with ease. People began talking to us, and we slowly became more involved in the community, at a meso level. My older sister and I became hosts, greeting people at the door just as we had been greeted on our first day there. My parents began studying theology at Alphacrucis College, study which they continue to this day, in the hopes of becoming ministers within the church.
Ever since the beginning of my attendance at Hillsong church, my personal faith in Christ has grown stronger. I have greater connection with the Bible because of online-based accessibility to the teachings of my church, and other churches. Therefore, when I began my PIP, I immediately knew that my personal experience would be of great use when looking into the impact of technology use in Christian churches. To have an unbiased perspective, I chose to rely on both my positive and negative experiences in both the Catholic and Hillsong church, as well as the experiences and opinions of others within the churches, and the greater community.
