Research Findings: How Technology Is Utilized To Express Spiritual Formation Practices

My research centered around semi-structured interviews with church-going technology end-users in Silicon Valley. The goal was to study how these church-going technology end-users were utilizing technology to express their spiritual formation practices. I defined "spiritual formation practices" very loosely and it consisted of any personal practice (not necessarily a formal religious practice) that helped these individuals connect to God and others and led to spiritual growth and depth.

I was able to identify 10 different types of spiritual formation practices that were common in all of the interviews. They were a mix of "traditional" spiritual formation practices as well as "non-traditional" contemporary practices that empowered personal/professional growth. Traditional practices were identified as:

1. Fellowship/Community
2. Bible Reading/Devotionals
3. Prayer
4. Journaling
5. Music
6. Retreats/Solitude
7. Witness/Serving
8. Church Attendance/Listening to sermons

The two non-traditional practices were identified as:

9. Reading news and Information gathering
10. Personal and Professional Development

In addition to identifying the various practices, I also wanted to know how technology impacted these spiritual formation practices. Not surprisingly, the ubiquitous nature of social media networks and connected devices such as computers and smartphones allowed these church-going technology end-users to incorporate technology into different aspects of their spiritual lives. Social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and WhatsApp were used to express, maintain, and even expand a sense of community and fellowship while smartphone applications such as Bible apps and Evernote, group text messaging, online music streaming, sermon podcasts, and web articles were used to augment, change, or even replace other spiritual formation practices. A more detailed discussion of these findings will discussed in the next blog post.

Finally, I wanted to identify some of the negative influences of technology upon the spiritual lives of church-going people in Silicon Valley. Four distinct spiritual formation challenges were identified though these interviews in which technology negatively affected the spiritual formation practices of these church-going technology end-users. These challenges were:

1. Distractions
2. Increased pace of life
3. Boredom/Dissatisfaction
4. Unhealthy dependence on technology

In the next few blog posts, I will discuss some of the themes that emerged from the data that I collected as well as discuss how they relate to the current literature and research that already exists.