Chuck Fromm has spent his life in the worship music business. Currently he is the publisher and founder of Worship Leader Magazine. Previously he served for twenty-five years as president of Marantha! Music, which he bought from his uncle Chuck Smith. His doctoral dissertation is titled Textual Communities and New Song in the Multi Media Age: The Routinization of Charisma in the Jesus Movement.
In the March/April 2011 edition of Worship Leader Magazine, Fromm writes about new media and its relationship to worship in “Jesus, Media and the Whole Bus.” In the article, he asks several questions including:
- Is worship fundamentally different via incarnational (face-to-face) communication(s) vs. digital interaction?
- Does the use of “cutting edge” technology – smartphones, streaming, interactive media, Facebook, Twitter – further or impede worship? (p.8)
So What?
Technology and new media are changing how people live, which necessarily impacts how they worship. What are your answers to Fromm’s questions? Is your congregation’s worship committee/leadership team actively discussing this topic?
For more information consider reading:
- Is Virtual Community Real Community? – a consideration of the three possible answers
- My review of SimChurch: Being the Church in the Virtual World (2008) by Douglas Estes