With aid of technology, preaching to the wired

Mainline Protestants embrace new media to get out the word

‘‘Each generation needs to look at how we communicate the Gospel effectively,’’ said the Rev. Nick Carter, president of Andover Newton Theological School. Its new chapel features video projection. (Zara Tzanev for the Boston Globe)

NEWTON - Saying evangelicals have gotten too far ahead of mainline Protestants in the use of technology to reach out to the unchurched, a liberal Protestant seminary here is launching a new program to train future clergy in high-tech evangelization.

The seminary, Andover Newton Theological School, is joining the Massachusetts Bible Society in establishing a media center that will also coach pastors on creating better websites and podcasts, train seminarians on the liturgical uses of video, and offer material on biblical interpretation to congregations and clergy around the country.

The two venerable organizations - Andover Newton says it is the oldest graduate theological institution in the nation, while the Massachusetts Bible Society has been distributing Bibles for 199 years - are trying to reinvent themselves for the modern era.

"The conservative evangelical community has been way ahead, and the progressive community has been lagging behind," said the Rev. Nick Carter, president of Andover Newton. "Initially there was a knee-jerk reaction on the part of mainline and progressive churches - 'That's what they do' - but now there's more of a sense that maybe they've got something there."

Carter said that the slow pace of adopting technology in some mainline churches reflects a lack of outreach. He cited as an example how difficult it is on many church websites to find the time of a worship service, because the sites are aimed at insiders.

Andover Newton has just completed construction of a chapel that is fully wired for video and audio projection and recording. In the sacristy, next to the chalices and candelabras, is a NetLinx integrated controller that operates the sanctuary systems. Brass plates on the sanctuary floor cover data and electrical outlets. And everything that takes place in the chapel is fed into a lower-level room that this summer will become the Massachusetts Bible Society media center, with a recording studio and mixing station.

The school intends to record student preaching, both for critiques and so the students can develop video portfolios for use in applying for jobs. The school, which has students from 35 Christian denominations, plans to train seminarians and clergy in producing and editing podcasts, streaming video, and other forms of multimedia for use in churches and on the Internet.

"The old ways of communicating the Gospel, while not ineffective, at this point are not reaching more and more people who rely on 21st-century technology for their information," said the Rev. Anne Robertson, executive director of the Massachusetts Bible Society, which in its early days employed volunteers called colporteurs to hand out Bibles from horse-drawn carts. The Bible Society sold its longtime bookstore on Bromfield Street in 2006 and took $500,000 from its $6.4 million endowment to finance the media center at Andover Newton.

The Bible Society has adopted a new slogan, "one book, many voices," to reflect its view that there are multiple possible interpretations of the Bible, and has launched massbible.org, a website that allows readers to ask a professor a question about the Bible. Robertson said the Bible Society is hoping to use the Andover Newton media center to record and broadcast lectures and other programs.

"We are concerned about biblical literacy, or the lack thereof, and we want to be able to produce materials that will help to address that," she said.

Carter said the seminary is also considering trying to develop DVDs about all of the books of the Bible and posting them on the Web for use by Sunday school teachers, particularly in isolated churches.

"For this school that created the model for graduate theological education, it's time for us to break the model and do it again," Carter said. "Each generation needs to look at how we communicate the Gospel effectively, and today, if your clergy is technologically challenged, the Gospel is technologically challenged."

Many theological schools have already moved in that direction. At Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, for example, there is a course on the use of technology in worship, as well as the role of religion online. That school's chapel was equipped this spring with cameras and computers so events could be broadcast, and just last week new faculty were trained on the use of interactive whiteboards, a kind of computerized replacement for the chalkboard.

A study this year by the Barna Group, a Christian research firm, found that 65 percent of Protestant congregations have large-screen projection systems in the church, but that usage varies by theology: 68 percent of conservative churches use video projection, compared with only 43 percent of liberal churches.

"In certain corners of the Christian community, using screens and digital imagery and amplified music are very common and familiar and accepted without question, while in other parts there's still a lot of even theological questions about whether it's appropriate," said Mary E. Hess, a specialist in the use of technology in theological education and an associate professor of educational leadership at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn.

"Within churches that are particularly interested in reaching out . . . you see more use of screens, film clips, recorded music, and a whole host of kinds of innovation," she said. However, technology is used less in churches with deep liturgical traditions, such as Catholic and Lutheran churches and in congregations where there is concern that technology "is disembodying, that somehow these technologies separate people."

Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.