The emerging spiritual crisis: What is church even for anymore?

Has digital ministry generated an unintended spiritual crisis?

With a few taps of a button, I can watch the worship live stream of seemingly any church in the world. I can download podcasts featuring the most thoughtful and articulate theologians of our time. I can watch shows and series that prompt me to contemplate life's biggest questions. I can even chat or Zoom with a coach, mentor, or spiritual director who can help me to engage the questions unique to my faith journey.

As the life of faith becomes more accessible through digital media, some will inevitably ask the question: what is church even for anymore?

If I can derive the benefits of Chrisitan community with the convenience of apps, video, and podcasts, why bother committing to a church? If I can learn to live a full Christian life from influencers on my social media feed, why deal with the encumberments of membership? If I can read and explore the scriptures through a screen, why travel somewhere else to listen to a preacher? Why not just go it alone?

Searching for God with Google: Searches for the question "What is the Bible" have more than quadrupled since 2004.

These are difficult, if not impossible questions, for today's faith leader to address. So perhaps the best way for churches to address such a question is to avoid arriving at this point at all.

How, exactly, do we do that?

For starters, imagine that our churches, regardless of denomination or tradition, were divided into two broad categories: prescribing churches, and discerning churches.

A prescribing church is concerned with pre-empting real and relevant situations. Often drawing upon the scriptures, but at times integrating tradition, theology, and reason, a prescribing church concerns itself with proclaiming what the faithful ought to do under highly specific conditions. A prescribing church has detailed, yet sometimes nuanced, perspectives on a catalog of cultural questions and challenges: how do I lead my business? How do I act as a Christian father? What should I donate to the church each month? While a prescribing church is attuned to contemporary realities, its focus is on preparation: equipping members with a clear Christian playbook.

A discerning church is concerned with contemplation and action amidst present-day reality. Integrating spiritual practices of prayer and meditation along with the scriptures, tradition, and theology, a discerning church learns to consistently ask key questions. What is God up to in our world? And how are we called to be a part of God's work? A discerning church is Spirit-led and situationally aware. When encountering a new situation or challenge, the discerning church delves into its practices to interpret how to be the hands and feet of God in the world. A discerning church is thus concerned with habit and practice: equipping members with a versatile toolkit, but not necessarily a blueprint or instructional manual.

Searching apart from the church: The steady decline of church-related Google searches, 2004-present.

Prescribing and discerning churches exist in all denominations and across the ideological spectrum. It's just as likely to be a discerning conservative evangelical church as it is to be a prescribing liberal mainline congregation. And both approaches to Christian community are faithful responses to the Great Comission. It is possible to make disciples with playbooks just as it is possible to be the hands and feet of Christ with tool kits.

The advantage of the discerning church, then, is that it is less easily replaced by digital media. The teachings of the prescribing church are easily outsourced to savvy media developers. But there's no "3 Steps to Faithful Living" blog post that can substitute for a discerning spiritual community. There's no online course that can provide the sense of communal grounding in which practices are explored.

The advantage of the discerning church is that it provides a space for grappling with questions that defy easy answers. It provides practices in which we can hear God speaking a word of grace into our world. And in an age of Instagram Influencers and self-aggrandizing social media, the discerning church provides a community through which we can differentiate God's call from our own ego and self-interest.

What is church even for anymore? It's not a place to learn exactly how to live in highly specific situations. It's not a place we go to get the Biblical answer or the Christian perspective. Your podcast feed can provide that for you, without taking away your Sunday morning.

Rather, church is a place to discern what your Christian identity means in an ever-changing world. It is a place to hear the voice of God - a voice that comes to us not as an answer, but as a question, not as a lecture, but as an invitation. In a world of ceaseless change, it is time for church leaders to stop prescribing. It is time instead to initiate a communal journey of discernment.

Hybrid ministry: How to design a multi-site, multi-platform worship service

The most demanding role in any congregation may be that of the worship planner. Each week, the worship planner integrates unchanging aspects of the liturgy with a constantly changing and accelerating world, a task that was demanding enough before our churches went online.

Today, the worship planner is tasked not just with crafting a liturgy, but with balancing the needs of both in-person and online worship attendees. While there are many aspects of digital worship for the planning team to consider, three are particularly important for a multi-platform worship service attended simultaneously by online and in-person worshippers.

A multi-platform, hybrid service requires language that welcomes the online and in-person worshipper. The low-tech requirement of inclusive language is the easiest aspect of hybrid worship. Yet it is also the most critical. Without inclusive language, the online attendee will always feel like a second-tier attendee, one who has a back-row seat to an event taking place elsewhere. Each component of the liturgy provides an opportunity to extend hospitality to the virtual worship attendee. Everything from the greeting to the sermon to the prayers and announcements could include a word of acknowledgment and affirmation for those in physical and virtual space.

An inclusive greeting reminds all who are gathered that we are the church, wherever we find ourselves for the service. Inclusive and hospitable announcements include directions for connecting physically and virtually (Zoom links, URLs, QR codes, etc) to each aspect of the church's life together. Inclusive preaching and prayers specifically lift up the concerns of those who are gathered online, inviting virtual attendees to contribute prayer petitions.

The worship planner need not mention "digital" or "hybrid" in each piece of the liturgy. But the service necessitates a consistent thread of hospitable language. Each week, the worship planner should highlight where these threads will be most visible.

Hybrid worship also requires the creative use of transitional space. An in-person liturgy includes moments of stillness, waiting, and musical reflection. We pass the plates as we listen to special music. We process to the table for the Eucharist. In some denominations and traditions, we sit in revered silence until the liturgy begins. These moments may or may not transfer well to an online worship experience. But if we are seeking to do hybrid worship, where we build bridges between virtual and physical, we must address what these moments look like online.

The worship planner isn't so much tasked with eliminating these moments, so much as they are called to think about what they look like in cyberspace. Perhaps during the Eucharist, online attendees view a slideshow of images from the church's life together. Or during the offering, virtual worshippers could watch a video about the impact of tithes and offerings on the church's work in the community. Each week, the worship planner asks the question of what the transitional aspects of worship ought to look like online. Then, the planner considers how to adapt just one of these transitions to the needs and expectations of online worship.

Communion at the (pre-Covid) Episcopal National Cathedral. The YouTube stream includes beautiful shots of the cathedral's windows as music plays.

Lastly, a multi-platform, multi-site worship requires some meaningful involvement from the virtual body of Christ. If those who worship online are only offered the opportunity to passively watch a live stream, then they cannot contribute to the work of the people. Failing to involve online attendees creates a second-tier virtual worship experience. Those gathered face-to-face join together for liturgy, or the work of the people. Those gathered online sit and watch.

When planning virtual worship leadership, start with small acts of involvement before designing more complex leadership roles. Simple involvement might resemble a prayer request submitted via SMS or social messaging, or an invitation to respond to the sermon via Facebook or YouTube comments. Once the worship planner establishes a pattern of virtual involvement, they might create opportunities for virtual worship leadership roles: lectors, cantors, presiding ministers, even preachers. Not every service needs a lector who records their reading offsite, perhaps at a location that complements the reading. Not every Sunday needs the prayers of the people read via Zoom. Still, the extent to which the worship planner creates opportunities for involvement is the extent to which worship becomes a truly hybrid experience.

The questions confronting today's worship planner are seemingly innumerable. There are questions of resourcing and staffing, software and hardware, production and distribution. In such a chaotic environment, one might lose focus on the art of liturgical development. By prioritizing inclusivity, transitional space, and involvement each week, today's worship planner can maintain a focus on liturgy - while leading through a period of acceleration and re-invention.

Stewardship and the Millennials: What church leaders should know about the most generous generation

When it comes to finances, some in the church don't expect much from young adults. The widespread assumption is that Millennials in particular give far less than older generations, that a confluence of student loan debt and self-absorption reduce their generosity.

Yet published data on generosity amongst the Millennials would suggest that this assumption is false. Some studies, including a 2019 report from Fidelity, conclude that Millennials donate twice as much to charitable causes as Baby Boomers. More recent data indicate that Millennials have donated and volunteered more than any other generation throughout the pandemic. This explains, in part, why companies with large Millennial workforces are increasingly committed to corporate social responsibility efforts.

Still, this generosity comes with some skepticism. The expansion of websites like Charity Navigator reveals how young adults want transparency and accountability with their donations. They want their gifts to make a real difference. While some have argued that societal impacts have an administrative cost, the reality is that Millennials don't want their money going towards staff salaries, building costs, and marketing budgets.

Millennials are a remarkably generous generation. But as a generation, their motivations to give are different from previous cohorts. Raised in the Age of Authenticity, Millennials are motivated not by loyalty to an institution. Rather, Millennials are inspired to give to movements aligned to their values and purpose. Millennials are driven to donate to causes where they believe their gifts of time and talent will make a measurable difference. So while young adults may not take after their parents in making weekly donations to a church, they are open to supporting churches that can tell the story of a measurable impact.

Stewardship with the Millennials is fundamentally a collaborative endeavor. When a young adult donates to an organization, it's not because they want to perpetuate the existence of an institution. It's because they want to be involved in an organization's mission. When telling their stewardship story, church leaders should avoid framing the conversation as a transaction: "give this, in order that the church might do that." Rather, the story must be told as a partnership: "join us in giving, so that together we might..."

A request for donations, offerings, and tithes is not a solicitation. It is an invitation to the shared work of the church.

Similarly, stewardship with young adults requires impact, accountability, and transparency. The story a church tells must make clear, qualitatively and quantitatively, the impact that offerings have had on causes and community. While every church has its own purpose and its own set of prioritized causes, there are certain issues and causes that are of the utmost importance to younger adults.

These issues include climate change and economic equality. The causes include diversity and inclusion. That's not to say that a church's stewardship plan shouldn't seek to share perspectives on the core work of the church: worship, education, and faith practices. Rather, when creating a stewardship strategy, the approach should be this: Make it clear how much of every dollar given addresses these issues and contributes to these causes. Then, make it clear how much goes towards administration, facilities, and staff salaries. As the church becomes more transparent with these figures, young adults will come to see the return that comes through potential tithes and offerings.

Some will dismiss these ideas. They will say that the work of the church is to make disciples, not to work for social justice. Others will suggest that tithes and offerings must be separated from transactions and charitable donations, that giving to a church is a distinctive act. Many from my denomination may argue that such an approach indicates "works righteousness," a theological concept often tossed around to resist change and innovation in the church.

These concerns must be addressed simply and succinctly. Stewardship is about responding to God's call through the Gospel to love and serve the neighbor. The stories we tell about the church's impact on climate, equality, and inclusivity are stories that emanate from God's call. To make an accountable, transparent impact on these issues and causes is to pursue a vocation of tremendous faithfulness.

It is now September, a season when churches tell their stewardship stories in an attempt to solicit pledges for the coming year. Stewardship with the Millennials is ultimately not about once-a-year pledge drives.

Rather, it is about a year-long journey of responding to God's invitation. Churches that find new ways of doing stewardship will discover how to tell digital stories of faith-based impact on issues and causes. Through video, blogs, podcasts, and social media, these stories must be told, and they must be told with consistency. At the foundation of this work is a pivot away from fundraising and towards discipleship and accompaniment.

---

@ryanpanzer is a millennial author.

---