Thursday 10 January 2013

Dear UCG, beat this

I've been mulling over a throwaway comment from Michael Snyder in his review of David Barrett's book Fragmentation of a Sect.  Snyder didn't quite seem to feel Barrett gave UCG enough credit for its outstanding technological grasp of modern media, including "recent digital growth online to compete directly for attention with nearly all major Christian Internet ministries, leaving the online performance of most other COGs far behind."

Yeah, yeah, lard it on.

The thing is, other churches are riding the digital wave far more effectively than the lads in Milford.  It's no longer enough to have a moderately cool-ish website, or plant a few annoying ads on Facebook.  Welcome to the age of apps, tablets, phablets and smart phones.

If you can't carry it around in your pocket or purse on your Android or Apple, well, such braggadocio is just going to raise smiles from anyone under 25.

Take the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod for example.  Now these guys are almost as far back in the theological Stone Age as UCG, worse even than the Missouri Synod.  But, piggy-backing on the enthusiasm and talent of some of their staff, they've done what UCG hasn't even imagined yet.  Check out the YouTube demo below.



And does Michael know that LCG (which plays Pepsi to UCG's Coke) has a Tomorrow's World app, though nothing as elegant as this.  Nevertheless that must be another embarrassment for the techies in Milford.

[Addendum:  It appears that there's a Good News app that I overlooked, but only for Apple.]


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