How the Digital Revolution Might Affect the Church
When I wrote The Digital Revolution and the Church (1308) I purposely kept it open ended, wanting people to discuss as to how they might deal with the challenges the revolution presented. Since then I have read a lot more around the topic and have started to think through how this revolution might specifically affect the church. So this blog post takes the next step on from my paper.
As I discussed in my previous blog post, Generation F have grown up online and therefore as willing members of the revolution their understanding of authority, of communication of cultural identification and of how to relate, is vastly different to those who are new or foreigners to the net. The challenge before us is that by in large, the church is mostly still functioning out of the old worldview.
The church is an institution, we exercise our faith through and with the institution. And most churches have in place particular rules about who can exercise what and when. In a sense the church mediates the believers relationship with God and moderates the believers practice. This sees authority held and dispersed by the church, which is an important safeguard and can be a positive thing. But the fact remains that it is likely this approach will be in conflict with the expectations of the emerging generation.
Generation F Christians have little respect for such institutional practices, preferring to bypass institutions in favor of a direct, unmediated relationship with God. Their question may well be, ‘What is the point of church?’
And the church isn’t alone in this with numerous institutions struggling with this shift away from the prominence of the old system. One example is the newspaper trade who face serious issues as their income streams from classifieds and advertising dry up; as people push against the news being adulterated (or at least suspicious of ideologically biased editorial policy). But what I consider to be the major issue facing the traditional newspaper trade is the asynchronous nature of the news delivery: reporting the news that has happened. Those familiar with the net are accustomed to synchronous news: reporting news as it happens. Thanks to Twitter, Facebook and streaming news updates, we expect to receive news while it is happening.
I believe this will eventually affect the whole publishing industry. The challenge is that the time between finishing the manuscript and the book launch is too long. When 
information is being communicated as it happens, a 6 month lag is in some cases untenable. To receive up to date information as to how this decline in print media is playing out follow @themediaisdying on Twitter.
In its simplest form we are seeing a shift from a top-down model to a bottom up groundswell. Brian Solis, one of the founders and leading thinkers around social media states that there is a future not so much for the institution of newspapers but for the brilliant journalists. He encourages them to communicate directly to the reading public via blogs, twitter and so on. He states,
Personality, motivation, determination and the ability to embrace risk and venture into uncharted and unpredictable territory is the only way to champion change and influence the direction of professional adventures
So how does this reflect on the church? What do we need to do to ready ourselves for the digital revolution?
First up, we need to recognize the utter importance of powerful, transformational preaching. And we need to create systems by which those with such preaching ability 
and gifting can be widely available. Why restrict a gifted preacher to one community? Lifechurch.tv lead the way in making resources, including preaching, available to more than those who turn up in person for the service.
We need to move from appointing leaders based on them completing the right degree to giving more weight to discerning their ability to complete the leadership task.
We need to create the opportunity for people to ‘be at church’ or part of a community at any moment in the day/week. Setting a special time on Sunday morning is artificial and limiting.
We need to re-consider our geographic mindset when it comes to church governance. The notion of us belonging to a village based church, of walking to church, bumping into the vicar at the shops and so on is for most a thing of the past. The local parish may well be replaced by more of a network of like minded people joined together by mutual 
interest from across the world. Such networks will have associated with them tags that define their uniqueness. Theological positions, social justice expectations, demographic descriptors and so on. And to find a church network that suits would be a matter of conducting a simple search using your preferences.
We will need to explore the nature of church leadership. There is a shift happening from the model of a few leaders setting the direction for many followers, to the model of the followers being much more involved in setting the direction. The growth in collaborative leadership models and the ascendancy of what Pew Internet Research calls the, ‘surging wisdom of crowds‘ is pushing forward the importance of the collective. In this instance the role of the leadership is to create the environment for collective decision making and then get out the way!
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I welcome your thoughts and comments.
Filed under Social Media/Web 2.0, Virtual Reality, Web 2.0 | |
17 Responses to “How the Digital Revolution Might Affect the Church”
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Wow dude! Really great stuff here. You hit just about everything all in one post. This is everything we’ve all been blogging about in one post. Awesome!
Very well said, Mark. I’ve done some of the cyber legwork to connect transplants with compatible faith communities. The web truly has changed how we connect.
These observations are right on as to the direction we are headed. Couple of thoughts. If the church is part of the consumer mind set — I want my news my way from my favorite blogger/newscaster — then we may miss part of what the church is to do here on planet earth. We go to church to both receive and to give. The church is not there to entertain me. I want to explore God on HIS terms not on mine. Don’t get me wrong — I’m a “cybermissionary” with GMO and deep into internet evangelism. But one thing I’ve discovered is that no matter how hard we try, we still need to connect with people that doesn’t involve typing. I hope that as believers move in the direction you’re noting, that we don’t lose the ability to serve one another and to be a part of a community (on or off line) that is about giving and not just receiving.
Not everybody has access to technology. When I go to apartment-dwellers in Arlington, Texas, the only way they can be reached is by knocking on doors as many of them lack the technology the rest of us have difficulty living without.
While I gladly listen to gifted preachers online, I don’t see how the Internet can substitute for the fellowship and face-to-face contact I expect when I go to church.
Yet if the church completely shunned technology, many people would never be reached.
Thanks for writing! This is certainly a should-already-have-been discussing topic for the global church, I’m glad it’s being discussed more and more now.
Looking forward to reading your previous post as well.
God bless ‘_^
The great thing about an institutional church is that they can do all the hard work of creating environments for people to bring friends to, get a preach fix, be involved in something and connect.
sure we can have a personal relationship with Christ, lead someone to Christ and connect without this.
But I see that the Digital Revolution - especially within the realm of Social Media - being an opportunity for people in both cases to be more effective and also as in the case of LifeChurch.tv bring it all together.
[…] We need to re-consider our geographic mindset when it comes to church governance. The notion of us belonging to a village based church, of walking to church, bumping into the vicar at the shops and so on is for most a thing of the past. The local parish may well be replaced by more of a network of like minded people joined together by mutual google-church.jpginterest from across the world. — Mark Brown, How the Digital Revolution will affect the church. […]
Is church to mirror culture - or to be counter-cultural?
Is church really best as a “network of like minded people” or is the life and message of Jesus about the exact opposite: all people, even those we dislike, every generation, culture, personality gathered around God’s common table?
Is preaching really the best transformative medium in our new context? Or is that actually the opinion of those formed in a pre-TV/pre-internet age - where is the evidence?
The church certainly is slow to pick up on this revolution - surprisingly. And you are significant in alerting people to it.
We need also to critique the digital culture as Christians - to be in the internet, but not of the internet.
Blessings
@liturgy
I do not agree with the assessment you make:
“The notion of us belonging to a village based church, of walking to church, bumping into the vicar at the shops and so on is for most a thing of the past. The local parish may well be replaced by more of a network of like minded people joined together by mutual google-church.jpginterest from across the world.”
That is contradicted by the evidence of the various suburbs of Brisbane. The one I live in has a very strong village culture. People shop at the local shops (as well as larger mega-stores), they still have local mechanics, dentists, butchers, banks, etc. They still congregate in local sporting clubs, and feed their children into the same local clubs they have had. They get local newspapers, local cultural events, and EVEN local churches!:)
Many of these folk also connect significantly online, as do I. I live locally, connect locally as well as globally. One does not need to contradict or negate the other. People can go online for anything as basic as looking for directions on Google maps or they literally move online and transform into an avatar in an online world and slowly become starved of sunlight.
There are different ways in which people utilise the online world. Much of the thinking that is reflected in your article assumes a fairly substantial swap that people will make from the physical world to the online world.
I fundamentally diagree and think that there is a much wider diversity to people, and how & why they use the Internet.
I use Social Media, blogging, Facebook and e-mail to foster more effective people connections, especially at a local level. At some level people may find a hand extended to them in love and care as more pressing than another post on their Facebook wall.
Nothing will replace or make rendundant the call to be the hands and feet of Christ, literally.
I agree with Gordon. Attending a virtual service is like listening a religious service on radio or TV. A good thing, but it doesn’t create a sense of community.
I think there is this confusing “both and” happening here. Our media is moving faster, our communication with each other has been reduced to ‘headlines’ on twitter — yet so many of us in the affluent cultures use these ’social networking’ means to foster RL community. We don’t send letters anymore, we email. We don’t call each other anymore, we twitter. We don’t send out party invitations — we organize an event on Facebook. All of these online social means have the potential to re-create our communities, but left in a vaccum, they will eventually grow stagnant.
I think of Paul who wrote letters to the churches, but so LONGED to be with them in person (1 Thess. 3:10). It’s this ‘in person’ that we are discussing now, what does it mean to be ‘in person’. Do I have to be able to touch them, feel them, smell their smelly selves? Or is a shared ‘emotional’ space simply enough?
I will admit that the online community is one that stretches the imagination, which is what the church is needing in these days, and there is this sense that many in the church ‘don’t get it’. So to tell them they need to start having an online presence is quite nearsighted. And so because of that, those who ‘do get it’, seem to tend to isolate themselves and carry on their work in a virtual-only context. I wonder how many ppl have visited livechurch.tv or even the Anglican Cathedral in SL and then have sought RL connections because of it. I would hope that for both (and all ministries) that would be the sought out ‘result’–that the hurting could be held, the hungry could be fed, the addict come out of the dark, and we all could see face-to-face (in a real flesh-to-flesh context) how deep the love of God is for His people.
while I agree w/ much of what is written above I do not agree the “brick and mortar churches” are going to be any time obsolete. But one aspect I would like to challenge is the idea that church / worship needs to be anytime any place..while that could be good I still think we (the church)needs to set aside a “sabbath” traditionaly it has been Sunday ..it does not have to be Sunday but to get ride of the concept of a communal Sabbath is a real change in theology..also church is about community..w/o community ie meeting people face to face I feel diminishes community ..keeping in touch is NOT comunity it is good and serves a purpose but in my mind it is not the read deal..it is like watching a concert on payfor view or DVD - it is good to hear the music see the fireworks but it does not come close to the experience of being there…
peace - steve
[…] Secondly, a controversial article - I think it’s a partial truth but there’s more to it - nevertheless well worth reading: How the digital revolution might affect the Church. […]
The Doctrine of the Church is a complex one. It’s not so much ‘Church’ that I want to refer to here, except to say that we always need to ensure our cultural adaptations don’t cut across the Biblical understanding of the aspects of Church. One area in particular is that it is a bit more difficult (but not impossible) to show love one for another when limiting oneself to cyberspace.
I did want to comment on the media, and the difference between the internets ‘as it happens’ as opposed to the printed media’s ‘what happened. I check the headlines on line regularly and enjoy the immediacy of the news but I don’t rely on the facts as they are written. Often immediacy means reporting only a half researched piece; a one sided gaze (the one with the loudest voice) or the gut reaction of the reporter.
Many years ago when I was living in an aboriginal community where I would often have to wait days for suppllies, I read my recently acquired wednesday’s Sydney Morning Herald on a friday. The Oklahoma bombing in USA had happened earlier that week and Wednesday’s paper was full of information on it as well as reporting on the Islamic terrorist networks that could have been behind it. By the time I was reading this on Friday the world had found out that it was Timothy McVeigh, a local boy with a different agenda to that of Islamic terrorism.
However the reporting of the ’suspects’ prior to the facts succeeded in influencing minds the world over, and as a result lead to ’shaping’ a xenophobic world. We could spend lots of time commenting further and speculating on justifying those actions or wondering if things might have been different without such influences. I am also aware that this occurred with only the printed media being responsible as it was before internet, however I think the comments on immediacy of reporting rather than research that has been checked (whether externally or internally by a person just stopping to think before they write everything they feel) for accuracy or one sidedness has merit. I am a big fan of weekly newspapers as the usually filter out the rubbish, or five minute stories and report the unfolding of main stories.
Latin has two words for ‘world’ one is ‘mundo’, the basic word referring to the physical world which we get our word mundane from, but the other is ’secularum’ which relates more to time, the here and now. We have adapted our understanding of secular as a result of secularism but none the less the connection between immediate gratification, living for the now, etc is still obvious.
You can see why I didn’t want to say anything about the Church, this was enough of a rant as it was.
In Christ,
Leeanne
Here are a couple of posts that dialogue with the above, including the comments:
http://www.liturgy.co.nz/blog/internet/827
http://www.liturgy.co.nz/blog/small-church/833
Blessings
@liturgy
I have really appreciated reading through these comments and thinking about what has been said. The depth of reflection that is possible as individuals respond to the collective thoughts is a tremendous resource in its own right. This is something that the digital revolution has brought.
Where else could I engage with this conversation with many very bright, very committed and very well thought individuals? In the RL, genereally only at university or that type of specific setting. The connection with the local community is essential, but it is also limited by sheer phsyicality too. A person may not have the door open to them at a local uni(as an example), for a lot of reasons, but they can access most blogs and comment like this from anywhere.
The dialogue changes, and changes us too. External changes in the local community will only occur is people have a commitment and reasonable belief and vision for those changes.
The fundamental building blocks of those beliefs are in the exchange of ideas, communication like this. The relationship between RL and SL, for example, reflects the inner and external relationships of our own selves. Some expressions are in tension, some are more authentic than others, all need to be discerned.
All are the product of choice, whether conscious or not. This dialogue helps us to be more conscious of so much more - that is the crux of it. Thank you for the Light of Awareness.
[…] Twitter, and Google Might Affect the Church” links over to Mark Brown’s thoughts, How the Digital Revolution Might Affect the Church. … we need to recognize the utter importance of powerful, transformational preaching. And we […]