With much consideration to the mandate Jesus Christ gave the Church, one of the most absurd thing to say is that ICT poses danger to the Church, it would be very odd to say that ICT have disadvantaged the Church. In fact, ICT is one of the major miracles we have ever experienced and no matter who have invented it; God has used them for the purpose of His kingdom.
While we can comfortably admit that some evil has been attributed or linked to the use of ICT, however evil happens everywhere, it happens in the Church gathering, it happens in our communities and the ICT world isn’t exempted from it. So, the question isn’t about ICT, it is about what we have been doing as a Church and believers. As long as humans are increasing, good or evil will be increasing and it depends on what we as believers are doing! Are we just pointing fingers at ICT as a means of spreading evil or are we determined to maximize the potentials of the ICT to spread goodness? If evil can spread through ICT, it simply means goodness can be spread through it too.
Why much evil has been recorded in the world of ICT is because lots of Christians and Church leaders didn’t welcome it at first, they either criticized or neglected it and the world took hold of it! It is just like what happened between Adam and Satan. God gave Adam authority over everything He made. By the virtue of that authority, Adam needn’t listen to Satan; he should have rebuked Satan as the one in authority but by allowing the dominance of Satan over his decisions, Adam failed and Satan took over. This is exactly the same mistake the Church seemed to make at the inception of ICT.
ICT is an acronym for information, communications technology and it is self defined. This means that with ICT, the Church can inform and be informed, communicate and be communicated to. There are lots of tools designed to be used in communicating and informing effectively. The debate as to whether ICT is beneficial to the Church is needless; it is simply very obvious that with ICT the church is fulfilling the mandate of Christ much more effectively! Coupled with the anointing of the Holy Spirit the Church has received, the Church can maximize the use of ICT effectively.
Today, we all have Bibles of diverse translations all over our book shelves and it wasn’t so during the times of our early Church fathers. In fact, in the time of the Disciples, not everyone could lay hands on the Holy Book of the Jews! When we talk about ICT, we are also talking about the technologies involved in it. ICT made it possible that the Bible could be printed and distributed all over the world!
The Church cannot deny that the printing press has helped in taking the gospel of Jesus to billions of people! The printing press was invented in 1440 by German Johannes Gutenber in the Holy Roman Empire who in 1452 began a famous Bible project. The spread of printing press was also the spread of the gospel as it became even much cheaper and easier to share God’s word to the world. In fact, it was the invention of the printing press that aided reformation which seemed as the war of books. The printed bible turned every household to a training ground and the Church didn’t end at the doors of a building.
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