On Wednesday, Christians around the UK gathered at the Hideaway in Sheffield city centre to watch Christian artists SXXNT and Damares Gomes perform and converse over their love of tech.
The event was run by global company FaithTech, whose station in Sheffield is the first of its kind in the UK.
Andy Mayer, the lead organiser of FaithTech in Sheffield said: ” FaithTech is a community of people who love Jesus and love tech.
“The problem it aims to solve is that often people who work in tech, their colleagues don’t understand how you can work in tech and follow Jesus. When you’re at church its hard to meet people who are interested in tech.”
The community has over 100 individual members, with members living in and outside of Sheffield.
Opening up the event, a tech panel was erected, where panellists in the tech and music industry answered questions about how to implement technology in worshipping God.
Andy added: “Jesus says we should share his teachings with other people and share how to obey his commands. Through modern technology we can pass these teachings through different languages which benefits us by having a bigger reach globally.
“For example I’m helping a friend of mine go through Jesus’ teachings through zoom and without that technology we would not be able to meet every week.”
Talking to SXXNT about how modern technology has benefitted his music, he said: “It’s as easy as ever being an indie artist in the industry if you know how to understand the algorithm. It took me a year and a half to reach a million streams and now I get millions of streams weekly.”
Christian music generates one billion dollars in revenue annually in the US, with streaming numbers on the rise globally for ‘Worship’ music.
FaithTech originated in Ontario, Canada in 2016 and quickly spread to over 40 cities across the world where Christians can meet and talk over their love for technology and their religion.