Well, I'm Afraid That Rock & Roll Is Here To Stay

This Internet, man.

Maybe you've heard of it?

It's where they keep web pages and all sorts of information. Apparently, it's been influencing commerce and culture and social networking and all sorts of parts that make up our daily lives for quite some time now.

At any rate, I was thinking about the influence on the music industry yesterday. See, Pennywise decided to give their new CD away for free. That's right. Absolutely free. For one day. You pretty much just made them a friend on MySpace and they sent you a link which let you download their newest music for nothing. Click, drag, burn for backup. Viola! Local bands have been doing it for a long time, too. And Radiohead gave their album away for whatever you wanted to pay for it. That's right. You just paid them what you could afford or what you thought it was worth. If what I read was true, they actually made more money per unit than they would've if they'd sold CD's the conventional way.

Of course, this gets the industry big-wigs into a tizzy. The technology is affecting their sales and bands aren't needing them to make money and all that jazz. So, while only a few bands are at a point in their careers where they can have that level of marketing savvy, the industry execs see the writing on the wall and are adjusting long-term planning based on it.

And this got my mind going on the influence of the Internet in my area of employ: The Church.

I mean, lots of churches started out with having pages that had service times and maps and listing their staff and their ministries and lots of information. Doctrinal statements. Values & beliefs statements. Stuff like that.

Then it branched off into having sermons on-line. Updating past sermons and the whole bit...including the sermon notes. Then came forums and chat rooms and such, where you could develop relationships with all sorts of folks. Pastors started blogging and MySpace and Facebook groups with church connections started springing up. Twitter lets pastors and staff connect with their congregations (and the congregation members with each other) in almost real time. I've even seen baptism services live on a webcam and sermons on YouTube and youth ministry conferences. The Church may be slow to adapt to technology, but they're doing it piece by piece.

But, I'm wondering what's next.

As the tech-savvy group that's currently in young adulthood, who uses technology to enhance community rather than just figure out what time the services start of if there's childcare or downloading the sermon they missed or a grab a map to the campus, I'm wondering how the Internet will be used by churches.

I guess what I want to know is what's next? I mean, I know it's already starting to shift a bit. Somebody told me that over 80% of folks either listened to a sermon on-line and/or checked out doctrine before they ever visited the church...and this is decidedly different that a generation previous.

So, in your opinion, patrons, just like the Internet now has bands giving away music for a day to increase buzz/listeners--what's the "next level" of influence of the Internet on the life-together of a church body?