Craig JacksonAuthoring in the Information AgeAnnotated Bibliography9 April 2015

For my final project, I am analyzing the effect on technology on churches, specifically regarding the growth of multi-site churches. These are churches where congregants gather at one location to watch a sermon preached remotely at another location (except in the case of the congregants gathered at the preachers location). These churches were not even possible before remote viewing technology, and they have seen significant growth in recent years. I will argue that this is a good development that allows churches to build unity and achieve their goals more effectively. I seek specifically to answer the following questions: What does a multi-site church look like? How does a multi-site church accomplish its goals compared to a single-site church? What are the virtues of multi-site churches? What are the limitations of multi-site churches? What effect does the multi-site aspect of a church have on the congregants?1. Wallman, James. "The Weird Way Facebook and Instagram Are Making Us Happier." Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 23 Mar. 2015. Web. 09 Apr. 2015.This source analyzes the way social media has affected how people measure status. Specifically, the author traces a narrative from experience as a status marker to goods as a status marker. Goods have served this purpose for a while, but the author argues that social media is giving that role back to experience. We proclaim ourselves to be of a certain status by posting about the experiences going on in our lives. The author describes how this has led to FOMO, or the fear of missing out. We have a strong desire because of social media to ensure that we are on the cutting edge of all the new and interesting experiences. This relates to my own argument because multi-site churches have made more churches that can garner more resources in order to turn church services into experiences. This article focuses on experiences as they have grown in importance in social media. I think I can apply similar thoughts to the way experiences have grown in importance in churches. Significant quotes: experiences are more likely to make us happy because we are less likely to get bored with them, more likely to see them with rose-tinted glasses, and more likely to think of them as part of who we are, and because they are more likely to bring us closer to other people and are harder to compare.Experientialism is still better than materialism.These quotes highlight the authors main argument, that competing with peers on the basis of experience leads to more happiness than the same competition did regarding materials. I think the same is true for churches: that experiential religious services bring us closer to other people and lead to more fulfilling ideas of how the church is accomplishing its goals.2. McConnell, Scott. Multi-site Churches: Guidance for the Movement's next Generation. Nashville, TN: B&H Group, 2009. Print.This book by Scott McConnell analyzes the growth and strategies of forty evangelical church congregations that meet and worship in multiple locations as multi-site churches. It outlines the process a church should consider when considering expanding to multiple sites. It highlights the specific problems and structural developments that appear for multi-site churches. These include the specific position of campus pastor, as well as the problem of figuring out how to foster community and unity across multiple campuses. McConnell addresses questions such as what level of autonomy will individual sites have? From where will leadership flow? and What ministries will garner the most attention? He also highlights the need for a church just expanding into a multi-site setup to have a core group of leaders to provide a stable foundation of unity and vision for the whole body of congregants within the church. McConnells overall argument is that multi-site churches can be more effective at meeting their goals for their respective cities, but that this is not always the case. Therefore, McConnell urges churches to consider carefully all facets of the decision before expanding to multiple sites.Significant quotes: Every multi-site church should be driven by an evangelistic passion.This first quote is cloaked in religious language, but it essentially means that a multi-site church should be multi-site for the purpose of accomplishing its goals in ministry, not for the sake of being multi-site.Launching a new site for a church has many similarities to launching a new business. Each requires lots of long hours, an entrepreneurial spirit, an aversion to the status quo, and a willingness to try new things, take risks, and sacrifice.This quote shows the gravity and commitment that are necessary to make the decision for a church to go multi-site.3. Kuzma, Ann, Andrew Kuzma, and John Kuzma. "How religion has embraced marketing and the implications for business." Journal of Management and Marketing Research 2 (2009): 1-10.This article analyzes the use of marketing techniques among churches. It builds on similar work from the 1960s that considered the expansion of marketing methods beyond business to promote social causes. This paper focuses specifically on church membership as a social cause. The article compares marketing success between megachurches and mainstream churches. A megachurch is not the same as a multi-site church, though many churches fall into both categories. A megachurch does not have to have more than one site; it simply has more than 2000 weekly congregants. This article claims that mainstream churches have not been as successful in marketing their product (so-to-speak) to consumers as megachurches have. Megachurches, the article states, have identified a portion of the population which mainstream churches were not successfully appealing to, and marketed their church towards that segment. The result has been huge growth for the megachurches, and dwindling numbers for the mainstream churches. Significant quotes: The success of the megachurch can be held up as an example of how marketing can be applied effectively, but it has also been viewed as detrimental to traditional religion. Despite the criticisms, the megachurch phenomenon shows no sign of slowing. In fact, these churches are also popping up in other countries around the world and have attracted the attention of other religions.Aside from pointing out some positive aspects of megachurches that also apply to multi-site churches, I would like to focus on this as it points out the potential to see these churches as detrimental to traditional religion. This is an objection I want to address in my project.Many megachurches are designed to resemble entertainment auditoriums, rather than traditional houses of worship. They attract huge crowds, so they have to have massive parking lots and often build on the outskirts of the city to allow for expansion, prompting some to refer to them as big box churches. They often lack stained glass, crosses, even Bibles because marketing research indicated that those symbols turned off the people that they were hoping to attract. If you are attempting to capture those unsatisfied customers of your competitors, you do not offer them the same product.This again gets at an objection which I wish to address.4. Warf, Barney, and Morton Winsberg. "Geographies of megachurches in the United States." Journal of Cultural Geography 27.1 (2010): 33-51.This article takes a closer look at the data behind the growth of megachurches. Again the distinction between megachurches and multi-site churches is important, but many of the things that can be said about megachurches are also true of multi-site churches, and most megachurches have remote campuses. The authors of this study take a human-geographical approach to the study of megachurches. They look specifically at the growth rates and rapidly rising prominence of megachurches in the religious landscape, specifically of the United States. This will be helpful to me as I make my arguments because I can draw specifically on the objective data offered in this article pertaining to the importance and relevance of multi-site churches in todays religious and social cultural atmosphere.Significant quotes: In part, their rapid growth and success reflects the successful employment of a sophisticated business model designed to attract the maximum number of followers and offend as few as possible. Ironically, these religious institutions have flourished in large part because they use secular tools. Typically, such institutions attract middle class members who value their church experiences as much for their social and recreational dimensions as the religious ones. Politically, they lean toward the conservative.This quote describes some of the potential reasons for success regarding the megachurches studied by the authors. I would like to address these theories of success, specifically upholding the legitimacy of a church using secular tools for the work of increasing the effectiveness of its strategies.Although megachurches do their best to establish close personal ties with their followers, critics frequently bemoan the loss of intimacy that they may entail. One may point to their ability to adapt religion to a culture in which entertainment has become the standard to which all discourses must aspire (Postman 1985), a view that underscores the appeal of televangelists and gospel entrepreneurs. Some critics compare McChurches to Walmart (Liu 2003; Business Week 2005), citing their secular, if highly successful, homogenized and unapologetic business models that succeed at the expense of smaller congregations.I like this quote because it gets at yet another objection which I wish to answer. This one is that megachurches (and multi-site churches) achieve their large growth rates by pulling members from smaller congregations.5. White, Thomas. "Nine Reasons I Dont Like Multi-site Churches." 9 Marks eJournal 6 (2009): 42-44.This article is more like a listicle with nine objections to multi-site churches. Each of these onjections is followed by a short paragraph explaining more clearly Whites mistrust of the multi-site church as it relates to that reason. This article will prove primarily helpful in its concise renderings of many objections which I hope my project answers. Among these include the following, with relevant quotations:A contradiction in terms: The oft heard mantra one church many locations is a contradiction in terms. An un-gathered church cannot know one another, love another or bear one anothers burdens in the same way a single assembly can.I think this objection does not hold up because a single site can accomplish the goals White is longing for here, while still claiming affiliation with a larger multi-site entity.Encouraging Consumerism: I fear that catering to worship styles and atmosphere preferences create purveyors of religious products serving spiritual consumers without creating substantive life change. This can lead to internet churches like LifeChurch.TV with a virtual campus in SecondLife.com. Parishioners never leave their homes. They simply turn on computers to watch a different screen, experiencing virtual community through discussion boards, contributing offerings through PayPal, and taking communion with saltine crackers and cool-aid.I think many multi-site churches answer this objection by encouraging the congregants to gather in small groups throughout the week. Shepherds who dont know the sheep: Hebrews 13:17 says that leaders will give account for their actions and those under their charge. I wonder if video ministers will give account for those multi-site memberspeople who have never prayed with their pastor at the steps of an altar, shaken his hand on the way out the door, or ever seen him in person.This objection is answerable because the campus leaders at multi-site churches often effectively minister to congregants, even though they may not be the ones speaking from the pulpit.I really like this article for the way in which it presents several common objections to the multi-site church model. All of these objections have reasonable responses, which I hope come through in my final project.