The research data in book “American religion” shows that the congregations use more compute technology. The author says that they will continue using more technology, but the important thing is how the technology will change and shape the congregation(61).
This data reminded me of the service, go to church online. It’s service that broadcast the church prayer and other stuff like Sunday school so that you don’t need to physically go to the church. They even receive request for prayer and pray for you. In the website that i found, several different churches participate in and broadcast.
I think such service appeared not only because the technology became available but mainly because older people increased in church just like author said in the book. If this service got more popular and more accepted, will there be less people in church, or the population doesn’t change? Or, maybe the population of church goer increase as a total including people who “go” to church though online.
Actually I figured out about this because I knew that in my country, Japan, some shrine does that and I was curious if church does it here too. In Japan, Association of Shinto shrine declared that people should be “”self-restrained” not to use the service of going shrine online. There are some other service(such as funeral and graveyard) that has religious part in, and it is becoming more and more accessible because of technology. But at same time, some people say that easy access can lower dignity of worship.