Church technological growth and sustainability: insight from system dynamics

Abstract

Religious organisations that have realised the importance of ICTs are increasingly adopting and using various technologies to spread evangelism while seeking to grow membership. Currently, a few studies evaluating the use of ICTs in religious organisations through systems dynamics approach to focus primarily on sustainability and a growth perspective. Very little is said in such studies about the use of the adopted ICTs and their impact on these religious organisations. This study addresses the knowledge gap identified by assessing the impact of ICTs on the sustainability and growth of the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) churches across South Africa. Data collection involved interviews with church leaders, a questionnaire survey of church members, a document analysis of the Book of Acts, and Facebook posts from the SDA churches. The qualitative data were analysed thematically using Atlas-ti 8. The questionnaire survey data were analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 25, while data from Facebook were analysed using sentiment analysis. The findings showed a high level of ICT usage among church leaders and members. The study found that church leaders use ICTs to create online communities for their congregations, which were essential in addressing the communication and informational needs of church leaders. However, there were reports of misuse of ICT, such as the circulation of inappropriate content, and scams. Nonetheless, the gains to the church were more worth it than the concerns as the church leaders managed to come up with corrective measures. The study further found that lack of proper data integration from distributed departments and poor consolidation of reports from the church departments caused church leaders to make wrong decisions that affected the operations of the church. For improved decision making, the study proposed the development of a pastoral analytics-based dashboard that uses a single screen for data consolidation and reporting. The study contributes to scientific knowledge by addressing the existing gap in the impact of ICT on the sustainability and growth of modern churches by developing a pastoral dashboard for church leaders. This study recommends further data collection from other religious organisations.