I think the real issue is not what technology we personally use, but building and maintaining community. And let’s be quite specific that community in this sense means close physical proximity to fellow Christians such that life together occurs every day rather than over the Internet or once a week during coffee hour at a commuter church. This sort of village life is how the Amish live today and how most people lived throughout history, but it has become essentially impossible today. Consider how difficult it is throughout most of America for adult children to find work and housing near their parents, let alone for members of the same church to work and live near each other. The economic headwinds blow strongly against anyone trying to gather people together in physical proximity unless one adopts a quasi-monastic lifestyle. The Amish succeed because they have an economic basis that sustains a communal lifestyle. What alternative economic basis could other Christians develop? – that is the big question, I think.
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