CompuServe Messages

David, Willow Creek Community Church, in South Barrington, Illinois, uses the VT in a variety of ways. Their whole ministry is "seeker" oriented, focussing on people who are presently "unchurched". So the services are very visitor-friendly, and rely on multimedia, music, drama etc. to get the message across to people who are wary or suspicious of more ritualistic practices in some traditional churches. The results are impressive. 15,000-some people attend the services on weekends. It's the 1st or 2nd largest church in North America today, even though it began with just a few dozen people in a rented theater in the 1970s. A project I worked on recently involved a short video of interviews of grade school age kids regarding the meaning of the words in some Christmas carols. Their answers, which were sometimes touching, sometimes humorous (remember Art Linkletter's book "Kids Say the Darndest Things"?), were interspersed among live singing of carols during one of the Sundays preceding Christmas. The kids' attention was riveted to the screen, and I think they learned a lot more about the meaning of Christmas than they might otherwise have. Michael Freeborn (new guy here)