I would have to say though that I have been quilty myself of forgetting to turn my cell phone off at the start of the worship service. I usually try to remember to place it on silent when I get out of the truck at the church building but I have remembered a few times after I got set down that I had forgotten. I then have to try to “sneak” it out of my pocket or its holster and turn the ring tone off. Although I have not had it to ring during worship services I have learned that if my cell phone and the tranmitter for the lapel mike get into close proximity of each other it causes a funny noise over the pa system. This happen due to cell phones receiving “pings” from the cell towers every so often. When this happens I try to discretely take my cell phone and move it to another pocket without the audience noticing what I am doing………….

Rich, good qustion. Some other improvements I think texting has over passing a bucket is are:

1) Personally, I would consider having the ushers walk around passing buckets to be more distracting than texting.

2) Passing the bucket only gives one opportunity for people to submit their questions, whereas with texting a person can do it any time during the service.

3) Texting allows the moderator to review quesions as they come in throughout the service rather than all at once at the end. If you pass the bucket you would have to do so earlier in the service to give the moderator time to review all the questions afterwards.

4) Texting makes the moderating easier because all the messages are all in one place and typed rather than hand-written.

But I do consider the fact that texting excludes more than half a congregation from submiting questions a big detractor.

It raises this question for me, though, how is this an improvement on passing around the bucket for folks to put slips of paper into, on which they have written their question?

Benefits:

There’s no technology gap. Everyone from kindergartners to grandparents could participate.

Lower distraction risk: people won’t be peering at their neighbor’s using this new-fangled texting thingie. And there’s no risk the cell-phones will go off if someone forgot to put it on vibrate or silent. Teens won’t be texting each other during the sermon under the cover of “writing the pastor a question.”

More anonymity: guests won’t feel like they’re giving away too much information if they have a question. Church memebers might feel awkward asking a really tough question knowing that the quesetion could be associated with their ID.

Less anonymity: If someone wishes, they could sign their name.

Sometimes “old school” works better, I think.

Regards,

Rich
BlogRodent

David

… as I think emerging mobile technologies need to be leveraged for good study instead of summarily being treated as a distracting evil.

Especially as the younger demographics beginning to fill the pews and lay positions now come from a context of never knowing a world without such devices!