Church technological growth and sustainability: insight from system dynamics
Matobobo, Courage
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.
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