The Transition to Hybrid Ministry is Here, Will Your Church Be Ready?

When I started writing "Grace and Gigabytes" in 2018, my goal was to convince church leaders to thoughtfully integrate digital technology with worship, formation, and faith practice.

Fast-forward to January 2021 (happy new year, by the way!), circumstance has made us all into digital experts, whether we feel like it or not! Ironically, the challenge for 2021 won't be to use more technology. Rather, we'll be tasked with staying connected to the best of digital ministry even as our church doors eventually reopen.

Now, I've repeatedly said that I am done making predictions about the COVID-19 pandemic. From my early April guess that we'd all be eating hotdogs at full baseball stadiums by August, to my recent conjecture that vaccine distribution would be rapid and efficient, I've proven to be a rather worthless prognosticator of late.

Still, if we work with the assumptions presented by Dr. Fauci and others on the COVID-taskforce, it's a safe bet that 2021 won't be an exclusively digital endeavor. At some point, we'll be able to welcome our communities back to our buildings, in a yet-to-be-determined format.

And as our doors slowly creak open, we can safely predict one constant: our faith communities will be thrilled to be back together. I imagine we'll see an outpouring of appreciation for in-person church assembly, the likes of which have not been seen since the invention of Sunday brunch and pre-NFL game Target runs.

Whenever "it" happens, and our eventual new normal will happen, our faith communities will exuberantly leave their Zoom calls and slam the lid of their laptops, running back to our church buildings faster than you can yell "coffee hour is back!"

With masks off and the coffee on, those in our churches will talk about how glad they are to have returned to "normal." We're back together - certainly, that means we can cut it out with all that online church business, right?

It is in these inevitable sentiments that we can identify the great change management predicament for today's church leader: how to retain all we've learned about digitally-integrated ministry, even as we enthusiastically look towards a return to in-person community.

Hybrid Church: A Bridge Between the Online and Offline

It's clear that the digital ministry toolkits we've constructed these past ten months can be a significant asset in service to our mission. Digital tools allow us to connect with those who cannot physically gather in a sanctuary, they facilitate more consistent collaboration with the neighbor, they help us to expand our perspectives beyond insular-feeling conference rooms. Their real-time collaborative features promote agility and continuous optimization, preventing us from becoming stuck or frozen.

It's also clear that we've all expended considerable effort in assembling these toolkits. Pastors who told me they aren't "web people" have become highly capable producers of digital video. Church administrators who joked that they didn't know how to spell "iPad" have become masterful at capturing, recording, editing, and sharing audio and visual content. And we've all seen faith community members who have become more confident sharing their perspectives, articulating their stories, and asking the biggest questions of our shared faith journey.

The question then is how we might take the best of the experience of deep digital ministry and bring it with us into an eventual new normal when we can be together at last. This year on the "Grace and Gigabytes Blog," we'll explore this question together, providing a roadmap towards the church's hybrid future.

Generally speaking, hybrid Christian community is an expression of church that balances offline and online connection. More specifically, a hybrid Christian community remains rooted in Word & Sacrament as it pivots to fully embrace the digital age value of collaboration.

If we work together to strike the right balance between offline and online connection, our churches will be more collaborative, but they will also be more empathetic, diverse, and adaptive. If we don't find the right balance, two scenarios are likely. We might work too hard at retaining digital ministry, exhausting resources and ultimately burning ourselves out. Alternatively, we might give up on digital ministry altogether, forfeiting the missional opportunities that come with it.

Striking this balance won't be easy. It'll require constant attunement, refinement, and reprioritization in all aspects of church leadership. At times, this balance will demand difficult engagement with those who are ambivalent or outright hostile towards digital forms of ministry. Not only is this a process of technological experimentation. It is also an exercise in careful change management.

As I write this post, it is January 4th. Snow is falling. Cases are climbing. But a vaccine is here, allowing us to catch a glimpse of an inevitable yet unpredictable future. That glimpse is our first peak at the church's hybrid future. Let's work together to turn that glimpse into a vista, from which we can set our course. And let us greet this promising moment with creativity and hope.

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@ryanpanzer is the author of "Grace and Gigabytes: Being Church In a Tech-Shaped Culture," available now wherever books are sold.

Book Review: Becoming a Hybrid Church

Think back to February 2020. Your experience of church was decidedly analog. Aside from some media-savy evangelical and "ex-vangelical" movements, most religious organizations had yet to see the value in digital connection. Estimates vary, but it's assumed that more than half of all churches didn't have a website. Most weren't on social media. Many didn't have internet in their buildings.

Throughout COVID-19, we've learned what it means to worship, learn, pray, and practice our faith online. Our most pressing question is no longer how to "do" church online. While there are still incremental improvements to be made, most churches have risen to meet this season of digital distribution. Rather, all church leaders must now engage the question that lies just on the horizon, of what it means to be a "hybrid" church. Now is the time for church leaders to determine what it means to be a ministry that blends the online with the offline, the virtual with the face-to-face.

In response to this pressing question, authors Dave Daubert and Richard E.T. Jorgensen produced an accessible and compelling guide, "Becoming a Hybrid Church"($11.99 USD, available from Day 8 Strategies). Taking a collaborative approach, the book includes recommendations for hybrid worship, stewardship, spiritual practice, and other aspects of Christian ministry, alongside discussion starters and prompts for further discernment.

Daubert and Jorgensen's work is compelling in that it casts the church's digital vocation not as an "add-on" or "extra." For the authors, digital ministry is essential to Christian practice in a tech-shaped culture, one that church leaders ignore "at their own peril."

Accordingly, their ideas go well beyond superficial suggestions to add a dial-in to a meeting or position a web camera at the back of the sanctuary. Instead, their ideas are grounded in the conviction that there ought to be parity between the online and offline experience of church, that digital and face-to-face expressions of Christian community should afford equal levels of connection to God and to one another. This moment demands considerable thoughtfulness and intentionality, with collaborative processes inclusive of both lay and ordained leadership.

"Becoming a Hybrid Church" is at the leading edge of a new movement within the Christian tradition. Savvy church leaders would do well to actually use the conversation guides that conclude each chapter, just as they would do well to put many of the tactics explored within this book into practice. But as a church, we need more than the implementation of these ideas.

We need church leaders to share their experience in moving towards hybrid ministry. As you begin to discern what it means to be a hybrid church, as you begin to launch practices that will build the bridge between online and offline forms of Christian connection, you ought to consider sharing your stories. Document your findings. What works? What flops? What facilitates authentic connection, what facilitates meaningful faith practice? As I read this important work, my hope is that more church leaders will use it as a jumping-off point for sharing their own ideas. With the hope of widespread vaccinations in the coming months, the "new normal" of hybrid church is just around the corner. This moment needs our experiences and stories, shared publicly for the benefit of the broader church. Daubert and Jorgensen have teed up the conversation starters. It's up to all of us to engage the conversation.

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@ryanpanzer is the author of "Grace and Gigabytes: Being Church in a Tech-Shaped Culture."

Church leadership is never going back to "normal"

Church leaders: I want you to think back to the seven days between Sunday, March 8th and Sunday, March 15th, 2020. In just seven days, you led a transition from fully in-person worship, complete with Holy Communion, choirs, and packed pews, to fully online worship with Zoom, YouTube, or Facebook.

When we think about the ongoing changes in this time of digital distribution, we would do well not just to focus on the technologies we have adopted, but the transformative steps we have taken as leaders. In those same seven days, you started the transition from a leadership model centered around in-person staff collaboration to a practice of distributed, digital-first Christian leadership. The office will no longer be the locus of church leadership. Offline decision making will no longer be commonplace.

A distributed, digital-first model of Christian leadership is here to stay, even after we arrive at an eventual new normal. Such a model aligns well to the cultural expectations of the digital age, and therefore, rises to meet the challenges of contemporary Christian leadership.

Fundamentally, a distributed and digital-first model is more inclusive. Digital distribution opens the doors to more than staff and church insiders because it facilitates contribution without unrealistic commitments of time, energy, and motivation. It’s far easier to hold a Zoom meeting that is representative of the diversity within a community than it is to invite these diverse perspectives to sit in synchronous, face-to-face meetings during the workday. When decision-making processes are not exclusively vested in staff meetings behind closed doors, we have a natural opportunity to include more voices, perspectives, and ideas. As Christian leaders strive to increase the diversity within their congregations and ministries, distributed decision-making practices send a clear message: that your expertise is needed, that your opinions are valid, that your ideas are celebrated.

A distributed and digital-first model is also inherently more collaborative. Most church offices, with their locked exterior entries, closed interior doors, and staff gate-keepers are not suitable for empathizing, ideating, and brainstorming. But digital technology is defined by a commitment to collaboration: the ability to draw more contributors into a project, the ease of requesting feedback, the seamless ability to get things done asynchronously. Cloud-based technologies like Google Docs and Slack naturally nudge us to listen, share, and decide together, while communication tools like YouTube and Vimeo encourage the communal practice of creativity.

In early March, we didn’t know that this time of digital distribution would permanently alter Christian leadership. Now we know that the momentum towards the shared leadership model is unstoppable. Digital and distributed is here to stay, even in the church. Let us be grateful for this ongoing leadership transformation.

Ryan Panzer is the author of “Grace and Gigabytes: Being Church in a Tech-Shaped Culture,” a book that explores how our digital culture continues to reshape the practices of Christian leadership. Join us December 1st for a free conference on how this time of digital distribution is permanently remaking the practice of Christian leadership!