Videos are replacing vicars in small town Australia because of an acute shortage of ordained ministers, news reports said on Monday.
The Uniting Church already sends DVDs of Sunday sermons to 20 towns considered too small or too remote to have their own ministers.
Project Reconnect coordinator Tom Stuart said the church was going digital to cope with a clergy shortage.
”These communities typically have a history where their church might have been built maybe in the last 50 years, but now, there might only be 12, eight or six people using that worship place,” said Stuart.
”They’re in a position where they’re wondering what to do now — should they shut down?”
Some members complained the DVDs were nothing more than ”TV church”, but others welcomed them as an interactive way to bring religion to small town Australia.
”It’s not about physical reconnection,” Stuart argued. ”It’s a sense of reconnecting with God, reconnecting with each other and reconnecting with their communities. At the moment, we’re limiting it to the DVDs; however, it’s not going to be long before we’re able to transfer it to the internet.”
For its part, the Catholic Church has recruited priests from India and other developing countries to make up for its own staff shortfall. – Sapa-DPA