Church in 2025 - apps, QR codes, and prayer requests

 

Several notes while visiting the venue for art exhibits hosted at a Protestant Church 9/2025 zip 49503

Many churches and their people take seriously the principle to be "in the World but not of the World." So it is not surprising to see similar features of everyday commerce, consumerism, and confusion experienced outside of church now to be applied to the functions of social interaction, coordination, and communication inside the church life, too. These two photos near the entrance closest to the church parking lot show some of the video kiosk messages that cycle through the screen. Several colored highlights later added for this article point out additional notes about the scene visible here.

The lefthand photo shows the "How can we pray for you?" slide in ALL CAPITAL letters for legibility and emphasis (the visual equivalent of shouting or using an 'outdoor voice'). The smaller text explains that your requested concern or joy will go out to prayers of that week to repeat in their daily habit of saying prayers for self and others. The screen message in the righthand photo is about forms of giving money to the church so as to sustain its activities, staff, supplies and other costs. Church-goers can send money by postal delivery (by mail), online (secure website), by app (phone or tablet), or by using the physical Giving Boxes located inside the church building. The QR code in the lower left corner of the video screen is also transcribed as URL that one can type or dictate into a computer or portable device to see how each of the four methods of giving will be handled.

In the righthand photo there are a few other colored mark-ups. The lavender one above the video screen is a video surveillance recorder to monitor the entryway from the church office or maybe from administrator cellphones. In the event of some offense or trespass being committed within view of the lens, the recording allows replay and analysis by city police, for example. Just like real life outside of the church premises, there are good reasons to observe and record the entrance. And yet, it does seem to displace any illusions of innocence or trust among strangers as well as friends. The blue box toward the right edge of the image points to the coffee shop atmosphere in this socializing space adjacent to cooking facilities. Since food and fellowship go together very naturally, it makes sense that the church makes the food and drink one of the first impressions a visitor gets by entering through this doorway. No religious paraphernalia or references seem to be at hand there. The green circle at the midline of the composite image says, "Connect with Us" and has four spokes. These are business card-sized reminders of church groups one can readily fit into (left to right): Students, Support groups, Women, Life groups.

In summary, a generation or two earlier, before the widespread use of portable telecommunication and Internet services, church membership was face to face on worship days (usually wearing "church clothes" - something fancier than everyday wear) and sometimes also on other days of the week, depending on the groups one took part in. But in 2025 many of the various age groups are used to interacting with each other on computer or phone screens and so the boundary of church and non-church is blurrier: some non-church expectations and processes filter into church life. And perhaps the reverse also is true - some church routines and habits figure into one's thinking and reactions to things experienced away from the Body of Believers. With software so ingrained in daily habits, it is hard to imagine how church-goers would think of relating to each other unmediated by mass media and social media. 

High-altitude view of our society these days: 2025 Art Prize prints

 

Fly-over art of timing big sporting event with air traffic, too

Many visitors to the 2025 Art Prize competition pause to peer at the rich detail from something like 3,000 feet above ground level that the artist, Tyler Leipprandt, has photographed in coordination with excellent helicopter pilots to put him in the right position with the right angle of light and the timing to show a passing aerial spectacle above the packed sporting events; all this with required permissions in hand. The entry is called The Art of the Flyover. The adjacent video loop at the left end is also captivating, ending with a link to "the making of" some of the rare sights: www.michiganskymedia.com.

There are many sorts of significance that a viewer can see in the giant prints. Some may have been in attendance at one or more of the mass sporting events that drew the photographer's attention and sparked the weeks of planning to put his lens in the exact alignment for the exact instant that all the elements clicked into place. So there is personal meaning. Then there are fellow (aerial and drone) photographers that marvel at the result so well expressed and in such large prints. Others may have no personal resonance or experiences with this technique, but they simply respond to the novelty of seeing the world in an unfamiliar way. There could be one or two visitors who consider buying a copy for business lobby or for home exhibition. As well, there are social observers and ethnographically inclined viewers who recognize that this frozen moment in time is a kind of mirror for the society in general.

Looking at the patterns visible from a great height there are many things to observe. One is the relationship of people to nature: trees, grass, garden features, and public parks are allowed, but only in their proper place; only after the livelihoods and living places are catered to. Outside of the cities and suburban settings, the ratio is reversed so that farmland and wildland is in the majority while the built landscape is scattered across it in bridges, culverts, roads, and utility lines. Secondly, the phenomenon of mass spectacle (broadcast on TV, livestreamed or recorded online, in person in bleachers): ticketing in priced tiers, parking requirements of vast scale, water and sewer demands during the 2 or 4-hour event, traffic complications before and after the occasion, catering to customer tastes in food and beverages, allowing fans suitable ways for them to make souvenir photos of the venue and teams and crowds and event itself. Maybe things have changed from ancient Greece or Rome, but there are surely common threads then and now. Thirdly, there is the technological wonder: myriad details have to intersect exactly to make the internal combustion engines run, the infrastructure of road maintenance and signage and emergency services; but equally complex are the myriad details going into the moment when the photographer frames and releases the shutter to record the moment when a speeding aircraft passes over the crowded stadium - all eyes looking at it - and also for the weather and piloting of the helicopter to be angled just right, too. From concept to planning & permissions to getting to altitude and recording to finally producing a finished picture is a staggering amount of control and quality assurance. Finally, there is the phenomenon of the ArtPrize.org competition and the many visitors who see the art for the first time, possibly interacting with the artist, and he with fellow artists and members of the news media on site. In other words, imagining and creating the art is only half the exercise. Until someone buys the picture for public display or private ownership, the full cycle of life is not complete. Living in spaces of social media, cameras for recreation and for surveillance to mediate daily experience, and marketplaces for creative work means that buying and selling art, building a public reputation, and engaging with "followers" and patrons who may commission future work is a living part of being a creator in 2025.

Much of one's own life seems to depend on documenting it for self and for others; something much less common during film camera (still and video) generations; something practically non-existent in the days of no consumer-grade cameras before 1910 or 1900. In other words, now in today's social experience and arc of life, failing to take a few snapshots or video clips along the way means that old-school memory and written notes are the only trace of one's experiences. Lack of visual proof is something that has become a source of distress in these times of ubiquitous cameras. This gives new meaning to FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out - something others do and one's own self failed to do). In the case the gallery display shown in this example, which seems to be more real to gallery visitors (or to the people in the stadium at the moment of the flyover spectacle): the large, mounted photo print or the few seconds of roaring jet engine and rare view of famous aircraft buzzing the crowd?

The society is BOTH an aggregated set of individuals of diverse biographical timelines AND a pattern of collective future expectations, past experiences, and present ways of behaving and reacting. Since almost all the spectators filling the seats on these game days arrived in personal automobiles (or shuttle services by bus from remote parking areas), it is safe to assume all of them share the worldview of personal transportation to buy and maintain. And the value of taking pictures during their big day out also is largely shared. Showing team loyalty in choosing colors to wear or merchandise to buy is another feature of mass sporting events that will be familiar to all those in the photo down below. Finally, there is a delight in technological wizardry that makes possible the mysteriously shaped B-2 Stealth Bomber, the magic of electronic warfare in specialized jets, and the deadliness of a formation of fighter planes.

Taken all together, the big pictures in this year's Art Prize competition capture visitors' interests, as well as capturing the flyover subject at the center of the aerial photo project. The big pictures also give social analysts a big picture view of the society in 2024 and 2025 in which mass sporting events still draw people away from their living rooms to attend the competition on the field of play in person.

Community insight 2025: weekly calendar for public information in rural Michigan county

p.3 of Leelanau Enterprise for 9/4/2025 (markup added)

As a rural county miles from the big population centers in the southern 1/3 of Michigan's lower peninsula, the weekly events page of Leelanau County's towns is not representative of the society around the state as a whole, but this list of public happenings, grouped by category, does say something about the local response to local needs. As such it is one kind of mirror for this moment in history when people of all generations and genders are increasingly isolated and independent from each other, even though electronic wizardry makes it possible to know about each other more than ever before.

Counting the number of entries in each category, the most frequent topics fit into SOCIAL EVENTS (16 times) and GOVERNMENT boards and meetings (15x). FAMILY support is least numerous (7 times). The added color for each entry points to the essence of the event. ADDICTION/SUPPORT is mostly centered on alcohol abuses, even though parallel associations do exist elsewhere for substance abuse other than alcohol, too. In the CHARITABLE/COMMUNITY category there is a weekly Rotary Club announced, but the 13 other entries are food distribution and baby supplies. In the neighboring column for FAMILY there are storytime (library), playground time, and parenting guidance and conversations. In the SOCIAL category there is fellowship: coffee hour, creative writing get-together, bridge (group card game), a big-screen event viewing (race cars), Spanish conversation, tap dancing, hiking, tai-chi, garden club, and farmers markets in several locations. Finally, in the heading for GOVERNMENT, there are boards of education, township boards, and fire & rescue governing boards that meet for public audiences. In many cases it is churches (and libraries, too) here meetings and other activities are hosted.

Standing at a distance as an interested outsider, this full page of events suggests a relatively engaged and engaging social fabric; that is, enough people take leadership and enough people turn out to make the get-together worthwhile such that there is mutual enjoyment and profit or meaning derived in these things. But at the same time, the fact that people cannot afford food and baby supplies, and others are burdened by addictions suggests that the system of wages and stressors is not good. This is hardly unique to this particular one of Michigan's 83 counties; nor is it peculiar to rural environments of small towns and the dispersed patterns of living spaces. However, the calendar is a visible record of things that otherwise might go unnoticed in day-to-day relationships and what people see or hear around them, incrementally sliding into deeper debt, desperation, or disease. In other words, this snapshot of early September 2025 is both hopeful (many interactions of people available, even if there are only a small number of active participants in any given week) and worrying (POTUS #TrumpConvictedFelon and his sock puppet handlers call their demolition of democratic practices and supporting structure a Big Beautiful Bill which will take effect AFTER the November 2026 elections are held). Once the full horror of no healthcare, safety regulations removed, federal offices abolished, military forces summoned on a whim --then the calendar page for the Leelanau Enterprise weekly newspaper may double in events, or it may disappear altogether when nobody can pay for anything or use precious unpaid hours to get involved in community socializing.

Genius of ordinary Americans in the USA and elsewhere

 

fast-food table and benches with uneven floor: napkin solution

Stopping for a snack at a hamburger franchise, just after getting ready to leave the booth, this small gesture of kindness caught my eye. It is the unsung solution to a practical problem that a fellow diner identified, took ownership of, and used local materials to fix. And while the immediate beneficiary may have been the person alone or those she or he was dining with, the stability of the table goes on to benefit others for days or weeks; at least until a cleaner goes beyond sweeping and douses the floor in water to mop up. That could dislodge or perhaps weaken the napkin solution to the tippy table.

Why would a customer intervene and fix the problem rather than ignore it, complain to the supervisor directly (or from a distance if going online to lodge a complaint)? It is true that not every customer is inclined to veer outside their lane in the role of consumer. But it happens often enough, that there must be some precedent, cultural expectation, or personal satisfaction in making things work better - big or small. Perhaps the rate of interaction or engagement parallels the findings of Website engagement: estimates of the proportion of website visitors who actually proceed deeper or who respond to surveys and other forms of interchange say that maybe a maximum of 3% of the people go beyond passive consumption of scrolling and actually start clicking and writing. That is something like the proportion of people in civil society in the USA who show up to demonstrate, communicate with elected officials, run for positions paid or volunteer, or who belong to service clubs like Lions, Kiwanis, Rotary, and many others. In other words, even though it is only a thin slice of the demographic pie, these people account for a disproportionate amount of social infrastructure, vision, engagement, and accountability.

Impressionistically, this willingness in certain circumstances to leap from spectator to player on the field may be related to the colonial phases of occupying and modifying the land and water, displacing (or worse) the people and other living plants and animals of the place. When there are few or no authorities and experts to call upon in a frontier setting, it is up to the person and those nearest to hand all to work to fix the problem - both the kind affecting many people (risk of riverbank erosion and flooding; oncoming wildfire; stampedes of buffalo) and the kind affecting just one neighbor, but too big for one person to respond to. That experience for most people residing in 2025 USA is many generations in the past, and yet something of the outlook (dismissing authority, celebrating skillful problem-solving and practical mindset, optimism, and minimizing pretense so that everyone can be equal in the moment) does seem to persist - reproduced in family stories, popular culture (books, movies, classroom projects), and so on. 

No matter what theory best explains local people or strangers passing by to spot a problem and then speak up or directly intervene, the fact is that such things do arise from time to time, normally without public awareness, accolades or other formal acknowledgement: just solving the problem is its own reward in this culture logic. So here is a bow or tip of the hat to all those unnamed people who quietly fix things that many others benefit from.

Seeing the world with new eyes and corrected lenses, too

Ophthalmologist's retail section for eyeglass frames

Seeing so many eyeglass frames on display can be akin to the experience of facing Too Much Information, TMI. But with the experience from earlier frames, the customer can usually narrow the search and only look for something similar, rather than having to study each and every variation on size, shape, color, texture and so on. If it is the first pair ever worn, then the staff can make suggestions to begin with, too. But a larger reflection from seeing this scope of choices and range in prices levels is that good vision is usually available to everyone who has no large visual impairment. Those with insurance subsidy do not have to pay out of pocket for the entire expense. Those with no insurance, and who cannot afford any payment probably will be eligible for basic eyeglasses paid for by the business owner, a local funding source, or possibly a program of the state government or a charitable (service) club with focus on vision, such as Lions/Lioness Clubs.

Besides the fact that modern life allows most people to have some kind of corrected vision, including the well-developed ecosystem or infrastructure (testing, trained professionals and licensing, supply chains and production capacity), there is the philosophical dimension of extending the useful life of vision for most everyone. Centuries ago, a variety of eye problems - congenital, developmental, or by accidents of life and livelihood - reduced the visual powers and pleasures and functionality of people young and old. In addition to the eye conditions at birth or later on in life, the aging process generally results in weaker visual power ('old eyes' or prebyopia). At the same time, literacy was less important to most people's day. So impaired vision was perhaps perceived as normal and less a hindrance than it would be today when oceans of printed matter fill the landscape and mailboxes, too. On top of that are the tiny screens and microscopic text size of Internet portable electronic devices.

In summary, as a practical matter it is good that modern life's literacy-dependent routines and decisions also come with relatively ubiquitous eyeglasses (or contact lenses, or corrective surgical procedures). Being able to see clearly is not simply a quality-of-life issue, it is basic to survival in the Information Age. But good vision is also a philosophical matter, since "I see" means both visual perception but also "I understand." In other words, what we see is often the same as what we know. Naturally, there are times when the meaning of something is NOT what it looks like at first glance ("don't judge a book by its cover," and "looks can be deceiving" since "you only see what you want to see"). However, there is a close relationship between good vision and good understanding. A land of poor vision may well also be a land of poor understanding or incomplete (mental) pictures of life. 

So at this high-altitude, abstract and philosophical level, when looking at this photo of hundreds of eyeglass frames, it is fair to think of all the people now walking around with corrective lenses (contacts or eyeglasses) in modern times who, long ago, may have gotten along in life with weak or even non-functional vision. Stated in reverse: the fact that most people today do have the opportunity to see clearly suggests that most people today also have the opportunity to scrutinize, focus on, and look into matters in such a way that they expect to produce sharp images and understandings; not a blurry or an unknowable grasp of reality. Widespread visual health may be overlooked or taken for granted, but it is more than a mere convenience and a basic condition for living in a word-heavy cultural landscape. It is also a worldview; a set of assumptions that one's surrounding life should be in focus and transparent.