DVD sermons spread the word

By Samatha Baden August 16, 2005, The Age

With a shortage of rural clergy, televised recorded services are replacing the traditional minister's sermon in small communities across Australia.

The Uniting Church, Australia's third-largest Christian denomination, is exploring the use of weekly DVDs of sermons and liturgy as part of Project Reconnect.

The church provides pre-recorded DVDs to up to 20 village worship groups considered too small or too remote to have their own ministers.

Project co-ordinator Reverend Tom Stuart said the strategy was conceived to cope with a clergy shortage in his own NSW central west area, including communities near Forbes, Parkes and Condobolin.

The DVDs are also being sent to groups in most states and territories, including the tiny north Queensland grain and cotton town of Theodore.

"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 same worship place," Mr Stuart said.
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He said a handful of detractors had initially considered the DVDs as "TV church", but those involved now saw it as a dynamic, interactive way to reconnect the church and communities.

"It's not about physical reconnection, it's a sense of reconnecting with God, reconnecting with each other and reconnecting with their communities," he said.

- AAP