The Church is missing a trick. An important trick.

The world of 2027 will be a world in which there are even more media outlets, producers and consumers than there are now. Forward-looking by its very nature, this is something that the Church should be prepared for, but even in the here and now the Christian presence in the media is far from heartening. This is not because the Church has nothing to say; far from it - the Church's message is as relevant now as it ever was. It is because nobody knows how to tell the stories that matter. At this rate, the Church will be left far behind as an imminent media revolution sweeps consumers towards a secularised society. The Church needs to catch up, and quickly.

There is a great need for media training to be included in education and formation of both lay and ordained Christians. Advances in new media technology will only serve to provide more platforms from which the Christian message can be spoken, but the onus is on the Christian community to make the best possible use of that technology.

At a recent conference of the Churches' Media Council, Andy Duncan, CEO of Channel 4 and Mark Browning, Programme Director of Heart 106.2, defended the lack of religious broadcasting in their respective fields by appealing to a lack of interest in such programming from their audiences. If this is going to change then it is up to the Church to educate and train its followers, and more importantly its leaders to make them realise the power and potential of the media.

A universal Papal audience

"There is room for improvement in how we use the media, and training is very important to help us improve in this area" says Fr Michael Walsh, a priest in the Diocese of Salford who also acts as the Diocesan Communications Officer. "Of course the best user of the media was Pope John Paul II, and this was a very important part of his papacy." The late Pope, whose strong presence in the media has been instrumental in raising the profile of the Catholic Church over recent decades, was not afraid to make use of the media as a part of his ministry. Many ministers of religion, however, are very reluctant to do this.

We are stuck in something of a catch-22. Largely negative publicity means that Christians are afraid to speak out with their good news; but a lack of communication of this good news means that only the less desirable stories come to the fore. So how do we become a more media-savvy Church?

The modern pulpit

The media needs to be seen as a tool for evangelisation, not as something to be feared. According to Clare Ward, a team member of CASE (Catholic Agency to Support Evangelisation): "The media is the modern pulpit. In some ways it is even more intimate than the pulpit as you can really address the individual." She is realistic about the uphill struggle that the Catholic Church faces in this area though, as she points out that some dioceses in England and Wales have only just reached the stage where all of their priests have an email address.

"By neglecting what's available we are holding ourselves back in communicating," she continues. "But there are signs of people embracing new technologies. Companies such as CathCom and Xt3 are helping parishes without the know how to make their own websites, and at a national level there are a lot of good initiatives. With technology changing so fast these days though it is getting harder and harder to keep up with new developments, and parish communities tend to consist largely of the older generation, so catching up at grass roots level will take time."

Paul Woolley, director of the think tank Theos, agrees that the constant developments in new media do install a sense of panic in people who feel they cannot keep up. This fear of the technology itself, and of the power of the media to damage those in the spotlight, means that the media is perceived by many within the Church to be an aggressor. This leads to a defensive Church, a Church that is always on the back foot and as such has missed the chance to evangelise through the media.

Woolley thinks that the media space is exactly where the Church should be directing its message. "If we look at it historically, to describe the media as the new pulpit is both useful and accurate. The pulpit was where people used to go to get information that was of interest to them - now the Church needs to think theologically and creatively about how to transfer from the pulpit into the media.

"The media offers huge opportunities to the Church. The secularisation thesis has stalled now, there is a renewed interest in faith - we need to speak creatively to address that interest."

• CASE
• CathCom
• Churches' Media Council
• Theos
• Xt3