Interview – Abraham Piper
Found a short interview with Abraham Piper at www.news.sbts.edu. I Thought the question below was particular intreresting.
How should local churches view the Internet as they think about ministry?
I think that churches should think of the Internet as a neighborhood, not mainly a tool. There are many things you can use the Internet for, but it is increasingly a place where people simply spend time.
When there is a concentration of need near a church or when many of a church’s members live in a particular area, the church will often have a neighborhood pastor, or at least an emphasis on serving that neighborhood.
Well, near every church there are people online in need. And most churches’ members live at least some of their lives online. Therefore, rather than seeing the Internet as merely a convenient place to advertise for things, see it as a place to meet and serve others.
Most practically, this means (in my non-church-leader opinion) that we ought to see churches hiring ‘Internet pastors.’ Web departments (and if your church is big enough to have ‘departments’ at all, then it should have a web department!) should not be primarily about technical upkeep, but about frontline ministry, just like the departments that focus on children, music or small groups, etc.
View the rest of the interview here.
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