See the February edition lead article on Interactive Church Resources entitled: "Blaine pastor forms company to equip churches with interactive technology"
Research of ARS use in Higher Education has found:
It Increases Attendance – 87% more likely to attend class
It Increases Participation – 72% more likely to participate in class
79% of students agreed it was helpful to know how their responses compared to the rest of the class
It Increases Learning Retention - Winona State University (MN) - documented that the percentage of students who were able to pass an Introduction to Business course increased from 62% to 97%.
Source of first 3 stats: Two Semester Research project managed reed | group, LLC in partnership with Thomson Learning, Turning Technologies and University of Illinois
"Just 9 percent of pastors said their church thoroughly evaluates its efforts - and a majority of leaders admit that evaluation never occurs or is ineffective when it does. One of the unfortunate outcomes is that many pastors lose objectivity about their ministries. . .
What tools and methods do you use to evaluate yourself, your ministry and your church as candidly and accurately as possible? What's keeping you from evaluating your church in the ways and to the extent you should? Yes, its an investment of time, money, energy and emotions. But God's people - and your ministry - deserve nothing less than your best efforts."
The Barna Report - Ministry Today Magazine Sept/Oct 2006
InteractiveChurch Resources (ICR) was begun in August 2006 by Tom Stuart, founder and CEO. Tom, fueled by a life long pursuit of cutting edge approaches to ministry, had discovered the effectiveness of audience response system (ARS) technology by experimenting with it in his ministry as a senior pastor.
Having found it to be an amazing communication tool facilitating interactive preaching, surveys, strategic planning and decision making in the church, he launched ICR to equip other churches and ministries to utilize this technology as well.
Two of the ARS applications that have proven to supply immediate high return benefits are in integrating it into preaching/teaching and congregational surveys. The introduction of the interactive technology into the weekly Sunday services provides instant rapport between speaker and congregation, immediate visitor participation, and an overall enhanced sense of community. In addition, the survey/polling capabilities provides instant benchmark spiritual assessments that can readily factored in to the church's strategic planning.
Tom Stuart - Founder/CEO
Tom brings to ICR over 30 years of varied Christian leadership experience serving as a senior pastor of both small and large multiple-staff churches, church planting, developing pastoral leaders and ministering internationally. He also serves on several boards including an innovative leadership training school and seminary. Tom has a passion to utilize this interactive technology to better equip churches and Christian ministries to strategically and effectively use their resources and leadership to advance the kingdom of God.
