wfn.org | Presbyterians Explore High-technology Witnessing on the Outskirts

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16-December-1996 
 
 
96496   Presbyterians Explore High-technology Witnessing  
on the            Outskirts of The Magic Kingdom 
 
                          by Alexa Smith 
 
ORLANDO, Fla.--Even though there's no church building yet, the Rev. Pat 
Risley is beginning to figure out how to use futurist technologies to 
preach the gospel in a suburb of Walt Disney's Magic Kingdom. 
 
     There will be a church, of course.  But right now, the 800-seat 
sanctuary is just a matchbox size model on the Risley family's dining room 
table.  The sanctuary will be built this year on a two-acre lot in the 
center of  what is intended to look like a traditional, small 1940s 
American downtown, in Disney's still-under-construction high-tech, planned 
community called Celebration. 
 
      Risley's job is not so much to go back in time, but to jettison ahead 
-- to model for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) how to do and be church in 
the coming century.  "The church has been doing American Bandstand ministry 
in an MTV-grind culture," he says. 
 
     "We're in a kind of second Reformation now.  We've [got to do] things 
a little bit differently. Step out of the box and take some risks," Risley 
told the Presbyterian News Service, just days after unpacking boxes in his 
colonial two-story manse.  "We have a chance to really make a statement 
about the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in a wonderful way." 
 
     In fact, the 208th General Assembly passed a resolution promising 
prayer and thanksgiving for the building of Community Church  in 
Celebration as a "unique opportunity ... [to] model new ways to do and be 
the church and to pursue congregational programming for the 21st century." 
 
     The hope is that PC(USA) guests to the Magic Kingdom will drop by the 
Welcome Center of Community Presbyterian Church in Celebration and learn 
more about the denomination's national and international mission and 
ministries.  While they are there they can also learn about high-tech 
witnessing -- using computers to teach the gospel to grade-schoolers and 
offering communion to shut-ins via elders and closed-circuit television. 
 
       It is also hoped that the church will be an outreach to national and 
international visitors to tourist attractions in Central Florida. 
 
     "The technology committee here met for the first time last week and 
[the possibilities] just blew our minds," said Rosalie J. Potter, the 
associate executive in Central Florida Presbytery who has supervised the 
Celebration project.  "There are inter-connects here between businesses, 
schools and homes.  The entire town interconnects," she said.  She 
described a computer system that allows for blood pressures to be taken at 
home but be recorded at the community's hospital and permits sick 
schoolchildren to interact with their classrooms from home.   
 
     "Everybody is accustomed to working that way.  And the church will be 
left behind if it's not a part of it," she said.  "But when we [the church] 
get into high-tech, we have to keep high-touch." 
 
     Risley's imagination is already fired up.  He's planning to transmit 
sermons into parishioners' homes via Celebration's intra-net, as well as 
pastoral letters.  He's hoping to run multiple small-group Bible studies by 
computer and to send elders out with communion for shut-ins who are plugged 
into simultaneous communion in the church's sanctuary.  Risley's also 
imagining how to enhance stewardship by beaming back to the community 
satellite footage of church members working on mission projects elsewhere. 
And he's hoping to use multi-media presentations in worship -- from big 
screen images that apply to the sermon to words for songs not in the 
hymnal. 
 
     The church already has a Home Page on the community's intra-net. 
 
     "There are so many possibilities, we don't have a clue," said Risley. 
He began leading worship in Celebration's downtown theater Dec. 1 for about 
120 people, with a choir on loan from First Presbyterian Church in downtown 
Orlando. 
 
     Risley is sold on the idea that technology is one of the primary ways 
to capture the minds of youngsters and youth.  "If we can't get donors to 
give for laptops for Sunday schools, instead of ...  windows in memory of 
Great Aunt Bessie, we're not going to be able to pass the faith on to our 
kids."  
 
 
     "The church has some critical choices to make about how to teach and 
reach people in the coming century," he told the Presbyterian New Service. 
"Unless we're challenging kids like they're being challenged in school, 
they're just going to see us as archaic, in the Dark Ages," he said. 
Crayons and paste, he insisted, just do not compare to the laptops children 
are accustomed to using in school. 
 
     Potter said the church's particular challenge will be to use 
technologies that can be isolatingly individualized to build community. 
"If we work with computers in church, it needs to be done in groups -- 
interactive groups, ... not individualized," she told the Presbyterian News 
Service.  She also acknowledged that some anonymity -- like brainstorming 
ideas through a computer onto a big screen -- may creatively engage those 
who would never speak in a group. 
 
     Forty-eight people in Celebration have said they intend to join the 
Presbyterian Church after two weeks of worship, Potter said.  Many of those 
who have decided to join have not been active church members before. 
Risley has been asked to do four baptisms. 
 
     When the $7 million complex is complete next year, Risley intends to 
have worship both indoors and out.  He  envisions baptisms in the fountain 
that is planned for the church garden.   
 
     "Celebration is already the most studied ... community development in 
the country," Risley said. "The new urbanism.  This is it," he added, 
citing Walt Disney's long ago futurist imaginings.  "And right in the 
middle of it, there is a church." 

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