Digital Media and the Local Church

by Dr. Steve McMullin

Digital media is bringing change to the Christian church in ways and to an extent that few people expected. At rst, many congregations saw new media as an opportunity to communicate with a wider audience but did not anticipate ways that media have transformed communication and the experience of community. We live at a time of great social change that is powerfully related to the digital revolution. The institutional church is in decline, and new media are changing how faith is experienced and practiced. These changes are more complex than many people realize, and the complexities of how digital technologies interact with the Christian faith make it even more puzzling.

After centuries of mostly one-way communication (from pulpit to pew, or from teacher to student), today people engage in online dialogue and experience online community. Online faith communities cross traditional social and cultural and ideological barriers. Congregations can provide online and multi-site opportunities for community that are likely to include individuals and groups who previously would have been excluded. congregation emphatically told me that their church would never use social media because they would not be able to control the content. At that moment I took out my cell phone, did a Facebook search, and showed them that young adults in their church, without asking for permission, had already started three active Facebook pages using their church name. The pastors were aghast. Later, as I met with the congregation’s young adults, they talked about how social media and texting made them feel part of their congregation—even though none of the content was being ltered by the congregation’s leaders. New media made the young adults feel empowered in their digitally mediated experience of faith and community.

Digital media can empower people whose voices may have been marginalized in the institutional church. People with disabilities who were excluded from worship by an inaccessible building can now participate online; those who work shifts on Sunday can access worship online according to their schedule; a retirement home for the elderly can become a video venue for a multisite congregation. Weblogs facilitate open conversations about topics that had been taboo or at least unpopular in traditional church settings; YouTube videos allow the wide dissemination of creative expressions of faith; online translation tools overcome language barriers that might previously have limited cross-cultural connections. These and other online platforms can operate entirely outside of the traditional institutions that had dened church life for centuries.

It helps when congregations and their leaders understand that digital media do more than communicate information more quickly and more widely. Communication itself changes in a digital age. There are good reasons why young adults sit across the table from one another in a restaurant texting each other rather than just talking. They communicate through texts what they would not communicate in conversation. Similarly, there are

reasons why teenagers send messages to one another as YouTube videos or on Snapchat instead of phoning each other. Social life is experienced dierently when mediated by digital technology, so church is experienced dierently when mediated by technology.

Because of media, people think of themselves dierently as worshippers. They experience the church community dierently because their connectedness to others is not based solely on gathering together in a building. The physical church building, which was an iconic symbol of religion and an essential aspect of community for centuries, no longer has the same meaning for a digital generation.

That is a dicult transition for many traditional congregations. Old church buildings across North America are being closed, and some mistakenly presume that the closing of so many church buildings is a sign of the imminent demise of Christian faith. But in some cases, the closures of historic church buildings may free congregations from constraints in the long term. Many aesthetically and architecturally impressive buildings that were constructed more than a century ago are not very functional in a digital age. They require excessive amounts of money to maintain and modernize, they are not accessible for people with disabilities, and they do not provide the types of spaces for worship and for community and for spiritual formation that are now essential.

Practically, here are examples that I have seen of how congregations use digital media eectively:

1. Woodstock Baptist Church live-streams their Sunday worship to the chapel of the retirement complex where my mother lived in her nal years. Each week, hosts from the church go to welcome dozens of residents who attended the service.

2. A Baptist church in Maine sent young adults to record brief video interviews with the oldest members of the congregation and incorporated the video clips in Sunday worship each week over a period of months. Media brought the generations together— elderly members were enthused because technology was purposefully used to include rather than exclude them, and young adults benetted from witnessing the depth of faith among the elderly. empower young adults to lead. Baby boomers may learn how to use digital media as a skill, but people born since 1990 live digital lives. Churches that think the use of digital media is merely a tool or a technique for reaching younger people will be disappointed. Media is more than a tool. For the young in this digital age, media are essential for eective communication and for meaningful social connections. Media are like the air they breathe and the language they speak. That makes them experts in how to connect in meaningful ways about faith with their own generation.

4. Perhaps most important of all, my research shows that congregations and their leaders who are thoughtful and intentional about their use and understanding of media (instead of simply using whatever some other church is using) are the congregations that are most eective in their ministry and witness.

SOME HELPFUL RESOURCES:

Campbell, Heidi and Garner, Stephen (2016). Networked Theology: Negotiating Faith in Digital Culture. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

McMullin, Steve (2019). “Church Renewal in a Digital Age,” Post-Christendom Studies 3, 3, 81–111. https://pcs.mcmasterdivinity.ca/wpcontent/uploads/2019/07/3.PCS_.81-110- McMullin.pdf

Sweet, Leonard (2012). Viral: How Social Networking Is Poised to Ignite Revival. Colorado Springs: WaterBrook Press.

Dr. Stephen McMullin is the Academic Dean of Acadia Divinity College, as well as the Sheldon and Marjorie Fountain Professor of Evangelism and Mission, and the Director of ADC New Brunswick.