categories: technology
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The Reverend Steve Jobs
I know that Steve Jobs is not likely to be a pastor of a Christian Church (since he’s been affiliated with the Buddhist religion), but what would the church experience be like if he were?
Here are a few ideas I thought up on one of my flights. I’d love to hear yours.
- An all-glass front with incredible floor-to-ceiling signage that would welcome you with crisp fonts and simple messaging.
- The lobby would be pristine, the walls would be sharp white with warm lighting accents, and there would be iMacs lining the walls on each side.
- Smiling people in black shirts and jeans would welcome you and kindly ask if they could help you, but quickly retreat if you told them no.
- Walk-in music…(anything from The Beatles).
- The auditorium would have an all-black stage with one large, stage-level screen and two slightly smaller screens on each side.
- The band would be set stage right, completely out of the way of the screen.
- Everyone would have an iPod with their own worship playlist (and if you’re new, one would be provided to you at the door).
- Countdown (using ProPresenter).
- Everyone with an iPod—earbuds in…would press play and simultaneously begin singing different songs (but no one would care, because you couldn’t hear everyone else and they couldn’t hear you…sing away!)
- The playlist would end, and Pastor Jobs would walk onto the stage to thunderous applause.
- Incredible imagery would display behind Pastor Jobs as he demonstrated the iJesus and invited everyone to demo it immediately.
- Everyone would be twittering as they were amazed by the iJesus…“I have to have that!” and “That changes everything!” would cross the twitterfeed.
Oh…and there would be tons of people everywhere.
Now…Did I miss anything? Anything I get wrong? Anything you can add?
Visit 
I have a question.
Is it worth investing in the iJesus today or should I hold out for about 6 months or maybe even a year when Jobs reveals a better and upgraded iJesus?
Sounds like a futuristic cult spoof from Futurama or a sixties Sci-Fi movie.
Too, slick to be real, which is why it works for electronics but wouldn’t work for Starbucks which has a warm toned invitation to sit and chat.
Everything would be extremely easy, including parking. They would figure some way of streamlining every process. Also, I imagine the service being interactive with the audience using iphones etc…
Can’t forget all the press and “evangelizing” of what was spoken of that day. And church would only be 2 or 3 times a year with the occasional gathering for special updates :)
Tithes would be 20%.
I think you have it right on. But we would have to wait for the SDK before we could really engage.
Christians would be called fanboys.
Multiple blogs would attempt to guess what would be revealed at the next gathering.
The gatherings would be moved to Tuesdays since that’s the day of the week Apple deems important enough for new product revelations.
And you’d have to pay for “ChurchCare” which allows you to make a reservation to meet with a Church Genius to talk about your problem…as long as it has nothing to do with how you poured water on your Bible.
David…I like that.
Chris…I think that happens for NewSpring announcements already.
Joseph,
It depends on whether is was just released and what the rumors are.
1. There would be no pre-announcements about what the sermon contained. Anyone speculating or providing “inside information” would be excommunicated.
2. If you got iJesus, you would be receive periodic updates where you would be encouraged to add iSaints and InHisTime, whether you wanted them or previously used them or not.
You could only share iJesus with five friends, before the DRM shut you down.
There’s a lot of truth in that. If that’s what speaks to people, what stops us from doing some of it? Great post. Funny and provocative.
Each major point of the message would be emphasized with a “and boom!”
http://www.boomcounter.org/
Glad Steve makes nice computers, but pray that we may be used somehow to reach his soul. One thing you missed. From what I understand about Jobs……at command we would all be bowing at his feet at the altar (including those who would be employed at his church).
http://www.GodsMac.com
This is hilarious…. the mac revolution!
And if one had an “issue” with his/her iJesus, meet with the concierge to set up a meeting to discuss how the iJesus can’t be repaired but we’ll be happy to replace it for you…at a reduced price, of course. (giggle)
Don’t forget iToons for the kids!
Pastor Jobs would end with, “And one more thing… the iJesus is a completely free upgrade and can be yours today.” Then, he’d hand us over to a closing song from worship leader John Mayer. That’d rock!
“And he performed great and miraculous signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to earth in full view of men.”
Man, Bill just beat me to it.
At the end Pastor Jobs says, ‘Thanks for coming everyone,’ as he walks off stage.
There is silence on the stage, and no one in the auditorium moves.
Then Pastor Jobs comes back, ‘Oh, and one more thing…’ and continues preaching the word and envisioning the people for the future.
This was fun. Thanks!
Great post… And I’m sure we would find apples in the cafe.. (with a bite out of them of course) and there would be those standing outside saying… “I can hack into this service in less than 2 minutes…”
There would be no imperfections, since no system or person could get a virus or bug.
He would anger and pester the neighboring Pastor Gates, who would then, in an attempt to play catch up, offer the cheaper and lower quality “Vista Jesus”, which would suck people in under the guise of a better “Jesus” and then leave them wishing they had stuck with “JesusXP”.
If you don’t like the current Jesus, we’ll just engineer a new one for you, market it, and sell it to you - but every Jesus would have a fairly short product life cycle and after the early adopters bought it, we need to move on to the 3.298357843054852 version.
got news for the tech heads - the Jesus I know don’t need a frikken’ iphoney thingy
so the challenge to stevie would be - how do you market a product that is infinitely ahead of you in every way!
and please don’t tell me that LC is looking at marketing Jesus the i-stevie way!
We would all be sitting on iChairs. They come standard with a touch screen that is loaded with the iBible. So it’s easy to look up scripture, download the notes from the sermon, and even sync with your iPod/iPhone
The iJesus would scratch easily and break frequently. Unfortunately it wouldn’t have any user serviceable parts so even if the battery quits working it would need to be sent back to pastor Steve for a healing.
I do like Bert’s comment that cold and sterile works to sell electronics, but not for something that is supposed to be warm, like coffee or Jesus.
How about the PC burning events where all the reformed PC users would pile up their Pentiums and set them on fire - I’m sure some PC’s would hiss and spit as they melted into a molten pile.
[...] friend Bobby Gruenewald from LifeChurch.tv blogged about what it would be like if Apple started a church. Which begs the question…if [...]
Don’t forget “Please turn to your iBible…” Don’t have one? See the ad for it: http://youtube.com/watch?v=c8wRIcv6esY
Pastor Jobs would have a special service once a week for Mac users where they would have access to insider info and downloads on all of the premiere updates of the church, creating a competitive environment between Mac and PC users in the church. Eventually, all PC users would be compelled to leave to join Pastor Gates church, making Pastor Jobs’ “Apple Community Church” 100% Mac users. Then Jobs would repeat his filtering process to filter out all non-iPhone and Macbook Air users until all of his congregation are Apple Freaks. In other words, his church would die in a week (lol).
What about Pastor Bill Gates/Microsoft church???
Oh wait, we already do that. :-)
[...] came across this posted in response to the Steve Jobs post at swerve.lifechurch.tv and had to post it [...]
Entertaining but facile. I think you mean “what if Apple marketing redesigned the church?”.
There’s a lot the church can learn from Steve Jobs, sadly:
“My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better. My job is to pull things together from different parts of the company and clear the ways and get the resources for the key projects. And to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better, coming up with more aggressive visions of how it could be.” Steve Jobs.
“We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we’ve chosen to do with our life. We could be sitting in a monastery somewhere in Japan. We could be out sailing. Some of the [executive team] could be playing golf. They could be running other companies. And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it. And we think it is.” Steve Jobs
“Apple is a $30 billion company, yet we’ve got less than 30 major products. I don’t know if that’s ever been done before. Certainly the great consumer electronics companies of the past had thousands of products. We tend to focus much more. People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done.” Steve Jobs
Awesome post!
[...] Posted on May 3, 2008 by Chris Great post about how church would look like if The Reverend Steve Jobs was the church [...]