If you’ve ever had a “Toll Tag” - a device which lets you drive on toll roads without stopping to pay with cumbersome coins - you know the blissfulness of driving uninterrupted to your destination. Or if you’re using a high-speed internet connection, you simply open up a browser and search and surf in real time. Maybe you’ve shopped a grocery store that use RFID for auto-scanning items for checkout and bills your credit card on file so that you literally bag your stuff and walk out the door.

If you’ve experienced any of those situations then you know what it’s like to have transparent technology.

Transparent Technology
The application and usage of technology that is seamless to the user; technology that doesn’t call attention to itself.

I think a lot of church leaders have an aversion to certain levels of technology (and the costs associated with them) because they don’t get to experience transparent technology in their week-in, week-out church service, events and communications. A few examples of interruptive technology usage:

• Feedback through the sound system
• Volunteer/Children’s check-in system that doesn’t offer bar code scanning
• Motion backgrounds that stutter and skip behind song lyrics
• Microsoft Powerpoint. Yes, I’m jaded. Buy worship software or use Apple’s Keynote
• Poor lighting on the stage
• Typos in song lyrics, sermon notes or anything else (electronic or print)

We typically can’t eliminate every distraction, but we should be actively doing our best to minimize distractions. In my short list above, most of those distractions have a relatively inexpensive solution and all of them can be eliminated.

What distractions do you see in church? How should we eliminate or minimize them?