Big screens at church?!

Abram notes in the comments to an earlier post that the Washington Post is the best newspaper in the country, and I happen to agree. (I agree with him about some, though not all, of the more important things he said in his comment as well, but that's for another time.)

Anyway, WaPo just discovered megachurches! I had to double check to make sure the article wasn't from, you know, sometime when I was a kid...very strange. The piece's hook is specifically about the use of technology, but its breathless ignorance of how completely established this sort of thing is in the evangelical church is pretty funny.

Though I'm certainly not done with the megachurch debates myself. This quote provoked me to laugh derisively, like a good small-church mainliner:

During a recent sermon at St. Paul's Collegiate Church in Storrs, Conn., worshipers sent text messages to the cellphone of the lead pastor, Benjamin Dubow, the substance of which he then integrated into his sermon.

"Prayer is supposed to be a conversation," Dubow said. "We did this to help people engage in the conversation live during the service."

Wow. I can't imagine how we ever could have done that in my small ELCA church in Chicago...oh wait, we did. The pastor just asked for input, and people gave it, with their mouths.