Boston, USA - Every Wednesday night, youth pastor Christopher Ziegler faces the formidable challenge of getting 50 Haverhill teenagers with no church background to stand and sing praise songs for half an hour.
He succeeds, he says, thanks in large part to MediaShout, a $429 presentation software program designed specifically for religious settings. More flexible than Microsoft's PowerPoint, MediaShout keeps kids interested by transposing hymn or Bible verses atop a variety of still or moving images.
With this tool in hand, Ziegler, 31, feels blessed.
''They don't know the words to the songs, [so] I can tell it enhances the ministry because the kids are singing full voice," said Ziegler, student ministries pastor at West Congregational Church in Haverhill.
Annual sales of religious software have reached the $80 million mark, according to a 2004 report from Packaged Facts, a market research company that tracks religious publishing. More than 60 percent of Protestant congregations now use large-screen projection systems, many computer-driven, and show video clips during worship, according to a September 2005 survey from Barna Research Group, a leading Christian trend tracker. And as enhancements to individual spirituality, a fleet of software products stands ready to help anyone learn Jewish chant, read daily Taro cards, or know when it's time to pray toward Mecca.
True believers in religious software technology say it's opening avenues to the divine by making the quest for holy knowledge faster, easier, and more comprehensive. But even some of the believers are concerned that the technology runs a risk of drawing attention away from the intended message.
''The thing that is all-inspiring to us is God," said Ziegler, who says that technology that gets too slick could become ''a distraction."
''We don't want the thing that is all-inspiring to be the [software] program."
Most religious software helps users penetrate digitized sacred scriptures. Logos Bible Software, for example, licenses 50 Bible translations and 5,000 reference works, such as commentaries and concordances, that the company bundles into quickly searchable electronic libraries selling for $150 to $600. Other Web-based programs, at sites such as biblegateway.com, offer free downloads as a ministry to reach the masses with the gospel.
''We get all the paper-pushing out of the way and give you time to think about what the passage means," said Bob Pritchett, president, chief executive, and cofounder of Logos Bible Software, where double-digit growth during each of the past four years is expected to bring sales near the $10 million mark this year. ''The best feedback I get is when pastors tell me, 'I'm preaching better messages and I'm spending one-third the time in preparation.' "
But others say the religious quest finds its depth in the journey, and to get answers served up in a split second is to miss the point.
''Nothing beats preparation" for a good religious message, said Mark Justad, executive director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Culture at Vanderbilt University. ''If you always want to look like you know what you're doing and have all the answers at your fingertips, the software could really help you. [But software] may make it too easy. You probably run the risk of short-circuiting the spiritual growth and hard work that comes with making an authentic presentation."
For laypersons, religious software often directs solitary devotions in their busy lives. Muslims, for example, in 2005 downloaded 600,000 copies of Athan, a desktop background program that automatically sounds calls to prayer five times per day and points the way to Mecca.
Practitioners of New Age spirituality haven't been quite so eager to computerize their practices.
''It has not been an easy ride to convince people interested in New Age spirituality to deepen their experience via electronic resources," said Samer Saab, vice president of marketing for Sahara Software, whose programs unlock the I Ching, numerology, and biorhythms among other topics. At New Age trade shows, she said, ''a very small minority of the attendees were actually interested in a computerized version of the reading."
Users nevertheless benefit, Saab said, by being able to grow spiritually without constant contact with a human reader: ''Our products have provided access to spirituality and New Age to individuals [who] would not have been able to grasp the concept alone."
However, some observers of the religious software trend say users are misled when they think genuine spirituality can develop in sync with machinery rather than among like-minded people.
''Faith is a community enterprise with accountability, encouragement, support, and discernment," said Quentin Schultze, professor of communications at Calvin College and author of ''Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age" (Baker Academic, 2004). ''What does it mean to be religious or spiritual or to flourish? Those answers come from the community. . . . The problem with lots of new technology is the individualization of belief rather than community-based belief. In its worst form, the individual uses software to create their own religion."
Debates about potential abuses notwithstanding, the faithful in and around Boston as elsewhere are increasingly booting up -- with varying degrees of enthusiasm -- to better learn the ways of God.
For the Rev. Mike Laird, pastor of North Shore Chapel at Hollywood Hits movie theater in Danvers, technology keeps him grounded in the word. He not only uses MediaShout during worship and BibleWorks to help prepare sermons, but he also configures his laptop to open to sacredspace.ie, where he gets a daily devotional from the Irish Jesuits as soon as he logs on.
''If I'm in Panera [coffee shop] working on my sermon, I can log on and it's right there," Laird said.
For the Rev. Daniel Szatkowski, however, software has yet to deliver on its full promise. After 17 years of turning to books to guide his sermon preparation, the pastor of Cambridgeport Baptist Church in Cambridge began using Logos's Scholar's Library a year ago. He hasn't cut down his preparation time, he said, but he does draw on more resources.
''I haven't always been sure it was worth it," he said, remembering he spent about $450 from his own pocket on the product. ''But I could see this is the direction where everything is heading. . . . It's my first step in building an electronic library."