We all read differently. As a pastor, I love reading about contemporary culture, technology, and how it affects the church.
I came across this list from the latest report from the Barna Group. Some of these amazed me. Can I ask you a question: Which one amazes you the most? Which one surprised you the most? My answer is at the bottom.
- Four out of five Americans (78%) who access a computer have sent an email in the past week.
- Computer users over the age of 50 are just as likely as younger adults to use email.
- One-third of computer users (33%) have used instant messaging (IM) in the past week.
- Thirty percent of Americans have sent someone a text message via a mobile telephone in the past week.
- One-quarter of computer users (23%) has a personal webpage or home page on a social networking site (such as Facebook or MySpace).
- Ten percent of Americans with regular access to a computer have a personal blog (weblog) where they communicate their ideas and experiences.
- Fourteen percent of computer users have posted a comment on another person's blog in the last week.
- Sixteen million American adults use a blog as a pulpit to broadcast their voices to the world. Blogs are most common among single adults, Northeast residents, homosexuals, those not registered to vote, and atheists and agnostics.
- More than seven out of 10 people who have a blog update their online journal at least once a week..
- Some of the more common uses of the Internet in any given week are searching for information or content (84%), online purchasing (27%), watching online videos (26%), downloading music (13%), downloading movies (2%) and viewing pornography or adult content (4%).
- Thirty-eight percent of evangelicals and 31 percent of born-again Christians listen to a sermon or church teaching via a digital recording available on the Internet (often called a "podcast') in the past week, compared to 17 percent of other adults. In macro-terms, that means that roughly 45 million Americans report going digital to acquire sermons and teaching content.
- In all, one out of every four adults (23%) says they download a church podcast each week.
The one that suprised me the most: Number 12