Addicted to print?
When I left for my sabbatical on May 1st I passed onto all the members of my church the details of my blog address, so that they could ‘keep up’ with the sabbatical journey as it unfolded. On my return, my first email to the whole church included a link to a bundle of the most significant posts. I then asked someone working in the church office to print that bundle up for those who are without internet access, or who simply prefer printed material. The resulting booklets were snatched up and more had to be printed, which is encouraging.
It is interesting to note, though, that many were taken by people who do, in fact, have internet access. Some even acknowledged that they had read some of the posts online but still took the booklet anyway. Although it feels really odd to ‘print’ a booklet which is just a static snapshot of an organic online entity, it went down a storm. A few questions come to mind.
- Are our churches more analog than we realize, even in a digital age?
- Is the ‘reverse engineering’ of printing out web-based material something we should do more or less?
- Do we find it easier to ‘dwell’ on printed matter than its digital cousin?
- Is your church more analog or digital?