Ignore the 3-step plan. Church online is not about self-improvement.

“If you want progress, take up running. If you want meaning, run a church.”

-Kate Bowler, No Cure for Being Human

Why does so much of the Christian internet focus on self-help? It's a question I've been asking lately as I sift through religious Instagram accounts that promote "three easy steps" for improving a career, a marriage, or even a holiday celebration. Sometimes, this content is less about optimization and more about prescription. What is a Godly way to run your household finances? What is the Biblical view on job hunting? How does Jesus want you to shop this Christmas season?

As more churches learn to convene online or hybrid communities, I hear more leaders asking about digital content. We're in this moment where we know we need to create or curate. Yet some of the most theologically-informed leaders want to focus this content on self-improvement: finding the right career, discovering how to be truly authentic, or even baking the perfect yule log cake.

Perhaps it's unsurprising that we have an inclination to create self-help content. After all, self help is a $15 billion business in the United States, and Millennials can't seem to get enough. 75 million Millennials pay for self-help apps, services, or resources. Tens of millions more can't get enough of self-optimization podcasts, TikTok videos, or Netflix specials.

If we're looking to create or curate content that spreads, self-help is a logical place to start. The only problem is that it's not what the church is called to be.

The Advent season teaches us about living in liminal moments, spaces defined by a tension between the now and the not-yet. When congregations read texts from Isaiah or Malachi, or when they hear the words of John the Baptist in the wilderness or the song of Mary's Magnificat, we are not hearing a call to self-optimization. We are hearing an expression of hope amidst longing, a cry for God's presence amidst the uncertainty of our world. The arrival of the Christmas season on December 25th affirms that God breaks into our world to dwell with us in these fraught moments and vulnerable seasons.

Blog posts and podcasts that teach us to dwell with loss and longings will likely prove to be unpopular. In this cultural moment, we want to hear from influencers who can subvert the pain and turn tension into resolution. And we want that resolution to arrive as quickly as possible.

A helpful test for Christian content creators is this: does my content create hope amidst uncertainty? Or does it merely promise certainty?

Does my content teach us to be better, or does it simply allow us to be?

Church online is not about self-improvement. The four weeks of Advent teach us that the speed of salvation requires more waiting than our culture would want or expect. Rather, church online is about presence. It's about making known the work of God in a world that is so far from where we want it to be. It's about revealing the presence of a Savior who speaks not in three-step plans or self-help books, but in solidarity with our world's sufferings.

Digital Ministry vs. Hybrid Ministry: What's the Difference?

Let's talk terminology.

In church leadership circles, we hear the words "digital" and "hybrid" with increasing frequency.

Often, they are used interchangeably. Occasionally, they are used in conjunction: "our digital-hybrid ministry offers..." As with any ministry model, there will be some ambiguity and overlap in their definitions.

But digital is not synonymous with hybrid. These are qualitatively different models, with vastly different implications for a congregation's resources, staffing, and ministry philosophy.

Prior to the pandemic, as many as 50% of congregations were analog churches. Without a website or presence on social media, they lacked the capacity, let alone the motivation, to collaborate with online communities for the sake of mission.

But many churches with some digital presence were actually analog. Their websites and digital content existed for one purpose: to bring people somewhere else. In this way, the websites of the analog church functioned as high-end billboards, directing users to buildings for synchronous gatherings, such as worship and Christian education. A church does not become a digital ministry simply by having a website or social media. It becomes a digital ministry by gathering around the Word of God in digital spaces.

Digital ministry, then, is about access to the grace of God, as experienced through digital forms of community. When we think about digital ministry, we tend to think of worship. Digital worship was the model that 96% of pastors implemented during the pandemic, particularly during the lockdowns of spring and summer 2020, a time when there were few viable alternative models.

Live-streamed worship services are frequently associated with the digital church, however, utilizing live streaming is not a mandatory component of a digital ministry. Engaging in book discussions through Zoom, conducting board meetings via teleconferencing, and fostering social media conversations around content are also ways to practice digital ministry. As churches reassess their reliance on live-streaming, they might discover that concentrating on content - or digital resources that educate, empower, and motivate their faith communities - is a more sustainable approach.

Digital ministry, then, exists whenever web-based tools are used to gather the faithful around the Gospel message.

Some assume that ongoing live streaming also represents hybrid ministry. If a congregation gathers in the pews and on Zoom, for example, then it must be hybrid.

It's not quite that simple.

Hybrid ministry exists wherever bridges are built between online and in-person participants. To be a hybrid ministry is to create opportunities for collaboration, online and offline. A ministry can only be hybrid when online participants are actively involved in the work of the people.

Sitting passively in one's living room while watching a YouTube stream is not hybrid worship. Listening in on a Zoom conversation is not hybrid church leadership. Recording a Confirmation podcast is not hybrid Christian education.

To practice hybrid ministry is to create opportunities for those online to collaborate with, and even to lead, those gathered face-to-face. Hybrid ministry demands a high level of creativity and strategic allocation of resources. For instance, a hybrid worship ministry may rely on platforms like Zoom for services, as it allows for active participation and collaboration. Moreover, a successful hybrid ministry requires designated individuals (preferably not the pastor) to foster online discussions, manage prayer requests, and moderate interactions in the chat.

Not all ministries have to be digital, and not every digital ministry has to be hybrid. Likewise, a congregation does not necessarily need to integrate digital or hybrid approaches into every aspect of its community activities. It is common for churches to utilize digital methods for worship, hybrid approaches for adult faith formation, and stick to traditional analog methods for music ministry. There will always be a place for both digital and analog ministries within the church.

But the congregations that succeed in implementing hybrid ministry, whether through worship or some other expression of communal life, will discover what digital and analog churches may not recognize: that the grace of God abounds, that the Spirit is truly present wherever we are located, each and every moment of the day.

How to convince your council to invest in digital ministry

"How exactly will this grow our church?"

When church councils evaluate spending and investments, this is among the most frequently asked questions. Trained in a culture where growth is synonymous with effectiveness, today's council members often want to see the straight line from budget items to more members. This mindset aligns with the widespread equation for church growth that Andy Root critiques in The Congregation in a Secular Age:

Members + Programs = More Members.

According to this pervasive logic, the programs within a church exist to prime, or to increase the number of members. Digital ministry is, by extension, one such program, the objective of which is to continuously accelerate church growth.

As our buildings continue to reopen, council members will evaluate digital or hybrid ministry with this same framework. How will spending on apps like Zoom, Slack, and Vimeo bring more people to our congregation? How will investment in technologies like video conference rooms, PTZ cameras, and shotgun microphones increase our membership rolls?

Today's church leader could follow this line of questioning to build a case for digital ministry investment. There is data, after all, indicating that 50% of churches saw an increase in attendance during Spring 2020, a season when most congregations were testing online worship for the first time. And while online worship attendance has dipped since its pandemic peak, many congregations continue to see video views that outnumber pre-pandemic worship attendance.

But maybe focusing on church growth isn't the best way to convince your council to invest in digital ministry.

What if digital ministry is not about growth, but is instead about faithfulness?

What if hybrid ministry, which integrates the online with the offline, is less about increasing our numbers and more about sharing our faith stories?

Digital ministry connects with those who are physically, mentally, or spiritually unable to attend in-person worship or face-to-face faith formation, and countless congregations have stories of how they have reignited relationships with former members who moved away. Church leaders have stories of how they have provided pastoral care and spiritual counseling to congregants who continue to feel anxious and isolated. They have experiences of how a conversation, or a blog post, or a podcast has resonated with an unchurched Milllennial, one who still doesn't plan to attend worship, but appreciated the grace inherent in the message. They can tell you about how they became reacquainted with someone who was an active youth group member before leaving the church for several decades, or how they started conversations with nursing home residents who for years had felt isolated from their church community.

These are the stories that reveal the importance of digital ministry, and these are the stories that today's church leader needs to bring to the council. These are the perspectives that the treasurer needs to hear before finalizing the budget and signing the checks.

According to Pew Research, 28% of Americans (and 21% of mainline Protestants) have felt their faith strengthened as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. While it's difficult to isolate a causal factor in this data, the combination of global crisis plus the ease of accessing church content and community undoubtedly contribute to these trends.

Nobody knows how the pandemic will end. Nobody knows when the pews will fill up to their pre-pandemic levels, or whether online worship participation will remain a fixture in the congregation's life.

All we have for certain are the stories: the lived experiences of those who encountered the grace of God while navigating a time of global crisis.

How do you convince your church council to pay $30,000 to boost your WiFi speeds or $5,000 to set up a video-equipped classroom? You share how these investments have connected the community to a God who tends to show up, not just in our building, but wherever we are gathered. You tell a story of a God who is faithful in both sacred space and cyberspace.

When we stop seeking the connection between programs and members, between technology and growth, the digital church becomes more than an investment. It becomes a community.