“Prayer presupposes communication and response”. In it, the divine-human relationship is essential. “God speaks, and summons us to respond”(28). Through prayer as the inmost expression of man’s voice to God, the divine companionship gives peace and power to the praying person. While there is a distinction between prayer and worship, both are closely interconnected. Prayer—as an outpouring of the soul to God—is distinct to worship as “an attitude of reverence towards God”(29). For G. Harkness, prayer must be understood in the light of proper understanding of human being and God. Neglecting the Christian understanding of man as sinner, volitionally free, and a community person makes prayer empty. “Prayer would be meaningless apart from the existence of human freedom”(33). Certainly, prayer helps a person to be useful in the society and a deterrent to sin; for at “the center of all true prayer lies spiritual communion with God”(37). Thus, a proper understanding of God is a necessity in the practice of prayer on common life. Quentin Schultze agreed: “God speaks, human beings respond in faith.” Because worship is a human-divine dialogue (vertical), it ought also to result in a human-to-human (horizontal) response, utilizing technology to enhance such “dialogic form of communication” (27). Schultze emphasized. “Worship has its own God-ordained purpose: gratefully expressing gratitude to the Creator in the most fitting means possible and inviting God’s grace to move us to sacrificial lives of service”(23). Worship is not meant, therefore, to mere dissemination of information, manufacturing spiritual high, teaching a lesson or evangelism (29,80), neither the use of technology in worship for the sake of presentational techniques only.
The fact that humans are multisensory creatures; worship ought to be multisensory also, hence, it is multimedia, catering to human sight, touch, heart, mind, smell, taste, and hearing (30-31). The important elements of liturgical worship must be used for meaningful worship of God. Worship includes greetings/invocation, confession, sermon, public prayer, affirmation of faith, offering of gifts, Lord’s Supper, and Benediction (33). Such elements must be applied with artistic expression (36). 84% church people use media for more relevance to members, 77% for relevance to youth, and 66% as evangelism tool in seeker-sensitive services (18). Among the traditional churches who utilized visual media technologies in worship services, evangelicals have the highest rate of users with 66% use computers, 63% use video, and 46% use overheads. Among the highest reasons for using media technologies in church worship are enhancement of attendees’ participation (76%), deliver information (59%), create environment (55%), teach concepts (37%), and use as a worship leader (5%). Still, the use of text only remains the (73%) highest media type used among churches; graphics and text (56%), animation (14%), live video (9%), movie clips (4%) and congregational videos (3%) follow (106). Churches acknowledge that advantages of using technologies in worship: through screens, more music and lyrics are used; music leaders can adopt other music fast; there is freedom of using hands and bodies and tend to look up and project their voices in singing; visitors are exempted from embarrassment of looking and holding on wrong pages and right books to open (54). With due consideration to the negative effects also, stewardship of technology must be employed by Christians in enhancing worship (77).
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