Back in September, I posted an item entitled "The Future of Entertainment" that reported on the holographic Japanese pop singer, Hatsune Miku. In that posting, I speculated on the possible uses of holographic preachers for worship especially in smaller churches. It would be possible for any church to subscribe to a preaching service that provided excellent holographic preachers each week.
Now, there's more. The American composer and conductor, Eric Whitacre, has created a virtual choir of hundreds of voices all of whom sang one of his pieces individually at home as a home video that Whitacre then combined into a virtual performance. The song is, "Lux Aurumque," a worship piece. You can watch it here:
Those who are interested can check out a brief explanation of how Whitacre put it all together (here).
The point is that members of those small churches I mentioned above could join and sing in a mega-choir that sings incredibly creative music, and they could share that music with the members of their churches. And, I suspect that these virtual options for worship are only the tip of the iceberg for what is possible. Indeed, worship in a decade or five decades may be incredibly different from anything churches have done in worship to in the past. I can't help but wonder, however, how many of today's mainline congregations will be willing to adapt to the coming future in worship—assuming they survive long enough to still be around in that future.
