The Technological Church

A version of this paper was published by the Moody Media Lab. Graphics by Ben Neary.   Dear church leader, Please allow me to introduce myself. I’ve never studied Greek or Hebrew, I’ve never preached a sermon or even taught a youth group, and I’ve never led worship. I’ve never had to make difficult decisions […]

Three Lessons from Father Daniel J. Berrigan

At least for my generation (Millennials), “the 70’s” means sex, drugs, and bad hair, and “the 80’s” means sex on TV, good music, and the decade my thrift-store clothes are from. What doesn’t come to mind is “penniless, powerful” or “defiant priest.” And yet, anyone familiar with the pacifist resistance movements in those years will […]

More Than a “Like”: Social Media Presence as Pastoral Care

Death and dying are never easy topics to broach. In some cultures, it is taboo to speak or even hint at death. But despite the silence around the topic, death never ceases to march on, ferrying souls from this world to the next. In the digital age the landscape of discussion is changing. No topic […]

Sacrament and Anti-sacrament: On the Media Criticism of Jacques Ellul and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Pere Pierre Marie Teilhard de Chardin and Jacques Ellul were two twentieth-century French Christian theologians who happened to integrate theories of mediated communication into their works. They did so in distinctly different ways, from distinctly different perspectives, for distinctly different reasons. It shouldn’t surprise us that they came to distinctly different conclusions, each of which […]

Second Nature: Best of 2014

From all of us at Second Nature, we wish you and your families a merry Christmas and happy new year. For our newer readers or for those who might have missed them, here’s a round up of our 10 most popular articles of 2014. (And if you’re curious, here’s our list from 2013). 10. Screwtape […]

Jana Marguerite Bennett’s “Aquinas on the Web?”: A Review

Jana Marguerite Bennett, Aquinas on the Web? Doing Theology in an Internet Age, New York: T&T Clark, 2012, 200 pages, $37.20. Like Jesus’ critics who wondered, “Can anything good come out of Galilee?” I often wonder, “Can anything good come out of Ohio?”  But a recent book, Aquinas on the Web? Doing Theology in an […]

The Imminent Decline of Contemporary Worship Music: Eight Reasons

By imminent decline of contemporary worship music, I do not mean imminent disappearance. Commercial forces have too substantial an interest to permit contemporary worship music to disappear entirely; and human beings are creatures of habit who do not adapt to change quickly. I do not predict, therefore, a disappearance of contemporary worship music, sooner or later. […]

Andrew Byers’ “TheoMedia: The Media of God in a Digital Age”: A Review

Andrew Byers, TheoMedia: The Media of God in a Digital Age, Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2013, 252 pages, $25.20. Andrew Byers serves as the Chaplain at St. Mary’s College, Durham University, England. As a Theological Consultant for Codec Institute at St. John’s College, Durham University, he has explored many of the issues addressed in TheoMedia: The […]

The Word Without Flesh: An Ethical Evaluation of Digital Media in Multi-Site Worship

It is not news to anyone that digital media use is a prominent characteristic of 21st century living. It is also not news to anyone that the American church is regrettably quick to fall in line with cultural whims (being all things to all people while remaining in the world but not of it is […]

Are TED Talks the New Sermon?

The digital age is invading our society like the army of locusts in Joel’s ambiguous prophecy (Joel 2:1-17). We have been ushered into a world of bits, bytes, data, and meta-data. Our interpersonal interactions are changing, our businesses are changing, and even the wiring of our brain is changing (Carr, Jackson, Brynjolfsson). “Media is now […]

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