Neat essay over on the Alban Institute site that invites congregations to consider way in which they are appropriately using insights from science and tools of technology in their daily corporate life:
“When I was a youth minister outside of St. Paul, Minnesota, some years ago, the local lore included a story of how Post-it® Notes were conceived during church one Sunday. A 3M engineer named Arthur Fry was singing in his church choir when the slips of paper he had used to mark the day’s hymns fell out, causing him to fumble to find the right pages. During the ho-hum sermon that followed the choir’s performance the idea dawned on him. He could take an elastic copolymer adhesive, developed by another scientist, and turn it into a tacky bulletin board note that could easily be removed and even transferred to another surface. This new idea of how to move from a polymer to a life-changing product is, I believe, a helpful tale for religious communities today. If the church, synagogue, temple, and mosque do not talk about and utilize modern science in their religious life, it will seep into our communities of faith anyway. People will bring the science they know, work with, or learn about from popular media into the life of congregations one way or another.”
The essay concludes with:
If you were to bring greater scientific knowledge to bear on a specific area of ministry in your congregation or faith community, how might you go about it? What area of ministry or faith might you choose, and what kind of scientific expertise or knowledge would you want to tap? We at Alban want to know, so we ask you to respond to a brief poll (see link below) to help us understand areas of religious and scientific collaboration or dialogue that would make a difference in your congregation’s faith and ministry. By answering these questions you can help us discern the areas of greatest potential for bringing science to ministry in ways that can help deepen and transform the life of faith communities.
Read the full article here.
There’s a link to the survey mentioned above there too.
