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Abstract
As Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) have entered homes and more, so Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) research has expanded to examine new motivations for coordination and communications. Recently this has grown to include a focus on religion. But, yet, while the uses of ICTs by practitioners of a variety of faiths have been examined, far less is known about how officials within religious institutions adopt, use and reject ICTs. In this paper, we report findings from a study of American Protestant Christian ministers’ use of ICTs. We present findings and discuss the use of systems in church management, worship, pastoral care, and outreach, and the challenges in integrating ICTs into religious practice. Despite these difficulties, we found that ministers, chose to experiment with ICTs because of their ability to sustain, reinforce and grow their church (laity and ministry collectively) community.
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1 School of Interactive Computing & GVU, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA
2 Department of Computer Science, Virginia Institute of Technology, Blacksburg, VA, USA
3 Department of Informatics, Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA
4 Georgia Gwinnett College, 1000 University Center Lane, Lawrenceville, GA, USA