Cell Phones in Church

I had the unique encounter Sunday Morning while preaching to look through the congregation and see the "cell phone church" busy at their "Blackberry Bibles" texting, surfing and playing away. To see someone on a phone is not an uncommon sight as many teenagers have their phones glued to their hands; however my problem on Sunday was I wasn't looking at teenagers but I was looking at grown adults playing with their toys during service.

I have wrestled with this all week. It is not uncommon during preaching that the devil uses things to try and disrupt and distract the preacher. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. For me Sunday, it worked! What is a pastor to do? Should we just ignore it? Maybe we should embrace it?! Is the old school method of the pastors that trained us to tell them to shut it off the right thing to do, and if so, how is this done as so to the message does not get lost in the medium it is conveyed. Maybe its your fault reverend, stop being Biblical and be more topical so the sermon can be interesting. What is a pastor to do?

Some churches clearly ask their members not to chew gum, not to walk during certain times and refrain or turn off their cell phones during service. Others have created "cell phone safe zones" where the uses of cell phones, PDA's, palm pilots, laptops and pagers is encouraged. The idea behind this is if a piece of technology helps an attendee pay better attention to the service, it should be welcomed.

To this end, many Pastors/Teachers, preachers and members have Bible software loaded on their phones and use them in church for word study, note taking and various translations of the text. When the babies give their Christmas speeches or participate in the choir, many parents pull out their cell phones to take pictures and record videos, surely this is fine, but to what end, when is it too far?

In this user friendly, technology driven church, how far is too far? What happened to the fear and reverence that used to exist for God's sanctuary. I grew up in an era where if you were chewing gum the saints would walk behind you in church, extend their hand, never saying a word because you already knew, take your gum out. Disagreements certainly happened in this era but the respect for the building would prevent people from "cussin" each other out with the phrase, "If i wasn't on church grounds I would......." What has happened to the reverence?

Some things don't belong in the sanctuary during worship. I shouldn't hear the ringtones of "Bedrock", "Grippin' on My Bed' and "How Low" in the middle of service. If Young Money, Ludacris, Lil Wayne, Lloyd, etc want to come to church, they are more than welcome to fellowship with us but honoring God comes first. To answer your phone in church and conduct a conversation while church is going on without the decency to at the very least excuse yourself from the sanctuary is disrespectful to God and His house.

I don't think its that much of a sacrifice to leave your Facebook, Twitter, and text messages alone for two hours to commune with God. I realize there are legitimate reasons for why a phone would be on but everybody is not that important.

So, What did you do reverend?! The old man in me (my home church would say the Woodberry in me) rose up. I stopped and told everyone to turn their phones off and put them up. It was a disservice to God and distracting to me. I am sure there was a better way to deal with it. I could have ignored it and talked to the offending parties in private but I believe you clean it up where it was messed up. It was done in public so the reprimand or rebuke must be public. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe I just need to be more exciting in the presentation, or maybe we just need to have more reverence for God, quit being so selfish and put God first by turning off our phones in church.
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Thanks for the rant,

Owens