One of my daughters who lives in Melbourne purchases her groceries on-line. There are hundreds of thousands of people purchasing items of all persuasions on-line. Take for example jewellery – earlier this year another such chain of stores went into voluntary administration.
How often have we heard of such retain closures. Walk down any country town main street or suburban shopping mall and the story is the same. I have a friend who is pondering the fishing industry as an on-line business. Purchase what you see, have it packaged, send it off, and it’s done and dusted.
My daughter is a professional, a wife, a mum, who says she is just too busy, too much on, to be getting in the car, putting baby in the car seat, the hassle of the traffic, a supermarket car park, a trolley and the little one, a list, items forgotten on the list, battling the lines, parcelling the purchased items into bags and the rest of it.
Now, she and her husband look on-line at the list in peace. They select what they want or need, make their selections, add to the ‘cart’ and make their weekly grocery purchases. They add their credit card to pay for it all. Sometime later – frozen food and all – a car turns up, the delivery person hands over the bags or cardboard boxes, the cartons – whatever – and it’s done and dusted.,
This is it
This is what is happening across the nation in various shapes and sizes, numerous types of shopping items, small industry to retain to motor vehicles to whatever. This is the new ‘us’.
There will always be a need for a supermarket as my wife of 43 years is happy to order on line her craft items for which she is familiar and confident, but shopping is something else. Moreover, Delma meets numerous friends from her many community ministry activities – they chat.
Chin wagging with on-line shopping is really not the done thing …. but it illustrates what the psychologists have been telling us for some years now, human beings need person to person communication. On-line dating is an example, it is the first step to meet someone and it goes from there. In previous generations the pool of the opposite sex was limited.
Church / Missions on-line
As early as the seventies there were church services on the television. Now I can open my iphone, go to Facebook or an App and there for one and all are as many diverse church services and Christian movies and such like. Many churches like ours, have the bank details on the big screen for tithes and offerings.
Missions have got into this too – they can use the bible on-line, agricultural resources for those in the field, educational aids and studies … it is all there.
Our young writers in our Press Service International are right up there with all these social media tools. Some use to effect Facebook, What’s App, Instagram, Twitter and a hundred others.
My energy company send me their App and my daughter in law put this app on my iphone in order for me to ascertain how much my latest account is. The missionary house, (a long way from Tweed Heads), the cottage is on the Whitsundays, Laguna Quays Respite, has 20 solar panels and every month I get a read out.
A very different world today. What does all this say for Christian congregations today, my advice – get with it. Make it work for your church / mission.
Dr Mark Tronson is a Baptist minister (retired) who served as the Australian cricket team chaplain for 17 years (2000 ret) and established Life After Cricket in 2001. He was recognised by the Olympic Ministry Medal in 2009 presented by Carl Lewis Olympian of the Century. He mentors young writers and has written 24 books, and enjoys writing. He is married to Delma, with four adult children and grand-children. Dr Tronson writes a daily article for Christian Today Australia (since 2008) and in November 2016 established Christian Today New Zealand. Dr Mark Tronson’s Press Service International in 2019 was awarded the Australasian Religious Press Association’s premier award, The Gutenberg. In September 2020 Summer Moore presented her commission portrait of Dr Mark Tronson holding the Gutenberg plaque. The above photo is the upper part from this portrait.
Mark Tronson's archive of articles can be viewed at: http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/mark-tronson.html
