Learning to Unplug: Why Less Technology Creates More Impact in a Hybrid Church

Church leadership circles are becoming apprehensive about the time demands of hybrid ministry. This is, of course, to be expected. While this season of prolonged physical distancing showed us how to be the church online, it hasn't taught us how to be the church online and offline, virtual and in-person, at the exact same time.

Beginning in March 2020, we've been learning that we can be a virtual preacher, and that we can be a videographer, but not all at once. We've been discovering that can be an online facilitator, and that we can be a digital content creator, but not simultaneously.

The closing of church buildings during the pandemic has allowed to live in to many different roles. Still, it's unlikely we would have learned to use all this technology if we were still attending to busy Sunday mornings, complicated volunteer schedules, and the logistics of worshipping in a building filled with dozens or hundreds of people.

So what will it look like when we reach an eventual new normal, when buildings begin to re-open? Will we find a way to balance the time demands of digital ministry with the realities of leading our faith communities face to face? Or will the allure of face to face connection cause a retreat from virtual spaces?

Recognizing that those entrusted to us live in an online world and that this online world is replete with explorations of faith and spirituality, we would be wise to not unplug completely. But without additional staff headcount, without new budget allocations for IT support or worship production, we'll need to be selective about where we spend our time.

Hybrid ministry, then, is a process of selective unplugging, of using the technologies that are most important at forming our communities for lives of faithful service.

I'm a technology enthusiast, a former Google employee whose view of technology is rosier and more optimistic than some. But even I know that even the best technology has its limits. That's why I'm such a believer in Cal Newport's work on Digital Minimalism, the philosophy that reminds us to only use the technologies that align with our purposes. To Newport and other digital minimalists, technology is a resource in service to our values, we ourselves are not tools in service to technology!

“Digital Minimalism A philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else.”

― Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World

As church, our purpose in the digital age is to gather and equip Christians for lives of faithful service and shared discipleship. The most dynamic hybrid faith communities will thus use technology that gathers, technology that equips, and technology that promotes collaboration.

As faith leaders, our task isn't to be always on all digital channels and all apps at all times. Rather, our calling is to be intentional about very specific uses of tools that gather, equip, and collaborate.

These three categories of technology in a hybrid ministry context afford us the ability to be selective. If we identify the best technologies aligning to each of these practices, we can unplug from the rest, saving ourselves money, but most importantly, conserving the energy and focus of our leadership teams.

Technologies that gather are particularly visible in public worship. With worship, we should only use the technologies that promote an equitable gathering experience for those worshipping in the sanctuary and those worshipping via a connected device. Many churches produced a recorded worship experience during the pandemic. While some ministries may have the capacity to continue recording, editing, and broadcasting a polished service, most will move towards worship live streaming.

In our services and through our gatherings, we should plug into the technologies that allow those connecting online to feel immersed and included. An iPhone with a USB microphone, mounted in the front row, streaming to YouTube may prove far more valuable than a Hollywood-style streaming camera affixed to the back row of the balcony. In our gatherings, our primary commitment is to inclusivity, not to studio quality!

We will use technologies that equip primarily in faith formation and Christian education. With our teaching, we ought to only use the resources that transfer theory into practice. Here, the focus isn't as much on hardware or software, but on content.

Christian educators, especially during COVID, have a gift for producing considerable volumes of content: blogs, social posts, podcasts, videos, etc. But all of this content creation is time and resource intensive. In a hybrid ministry, Christian educators determine one or maybe two types of categories that facilitate spiritual practice. A youth group might find that guided prayers and meditations on Instagram Stories or IGTV do just that, whereas a senior's group might prefer a discussion on a Facebook wall post. Whatever you teach, whatever content you produce, make a commitment to minimalism and consistency. Share relevant content through the most appropriate channel on a predictable cadence - and then, share no more.

Finally, we will use technologies that facilitate collaboration throughout our ministry, but primarily in church leadership and administration. From Google Docs to Slack and Microsoft Teams, there's no shortage of "real-time" collaboration software to choose from.

As a member of my congregation recently pointed out, the more collaboration software we introduce, the more diluted our efforts, the more difficult it is to truly collaborate. In church leadership, we should regularly reflect on the purpose of our collaboration. Do we want tech that helps us to share the work of administrative tasks? Or do we want to use tools that promote asynchronous or virtual contributions to projects? Prioritize one method of collaboration, and select a tool that aligns with that specific use case. But start with specificity, with precision. Should the need arise, we can always add more collaborative technology.

In a hybrid ministry, less technology creates more impact. When we choose simple uses of technology that equip, gather, and collaborate, our communities are more likely to embrace the church's digital future. Moreover, our communities are more likely to join in living into our shared mission. When we overburden our faith communities with apps and hardware, subscriptions and services, we're that much more likely to desire a return to the "good 'ol days" of February 2020. As we look towards an eventual new normal, when the doors of our sanctuaries creak open, let us begin to unplug from that which is superfluous, so that we can connect where it matters most.

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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.

Hybrid Ministry: The Technologies Your Congregation Cannot Do Without

"So, what technology should we continue using? You know, after we get back to normal?"

It's a question I regularly hear while talking digital age ministry with church leaders, one that ministry professionals are asking with increasing frequency. Implicit in the question is a desire to jettison some, if not most, of the tools and digital resources that allow us to continue being church during a time of digital distribution. I can empathize with the sentiment. For many pastors, priests, and deacons, it's difficult enough to film, edit, and broadcast a single worship service. It's unfathomable for them to think about managing all of this technology while also proclaiming the Word and administering the Sacraments at an in-person service.

Also buried in the question is an assumption that faith communities inevitably will return to where they were in February 2020, that 18 months of virtual-first faith practice will somehow not change what it means to be a Christian in a post-pandemic reality. Surely we can all empathize with this mindset. Who among us doesn't long for a return to vibrant in-person community, to seeing our friends and neighbors, to communion, to coffee hours, to what we once knew as Christian fellowship?

One possible answer to this question would be to continue using all of the same technology we're using to bring church to those staying safer at home. Keep the Zoom licenses, continue the platform subscriptions, and stay the course. As an alternative, we could stop using technology altogether, recognizing that the future of Christianity is not exclusively digital, and therefore we ought to put our focus on in-person connection.

Yet the best answer to the question of what technology we should continue using is nuanced.

Faith communities should continue using some, but not all, technology. Churches should celebrate a return to in-person connection, when available, but not think of face-to-face as the only authentic expression of church.

In fact, the best way to answer this question is not with a categorical list or blanket rejection of technology, but with two subsequent questions:

• What are the technologies that can equip our communities for lives of faithful service?

• And what technologies facilitate collaboration in our life together?

These questions should be top of mind because they remind us to focus on digital minimalism, to only deploy those technologies that align with our mission and values.

There is little purpose in a church continuing to use a specific piece of technology if it doesn't equip our faith community for acts of Christian love and service to a hurting world. If a technology isn't actively used for teaching, preaching, praying, proclaiming, encouraging, or empowering, it functions as little more than an online bulletin board. If a digital tool doesn't facilitate discipleship, disconnect.

But when we think about this question, we might realize how our usage of Zoom has brought together diverse cross-sections of our community to engage issues of justice and learning, how our posts to Instagram Stories have introduced moments of sacred pause and prayer into the frenzied world of social media. It's likely that we can identify which technology is equipping our faith communities in the here and now. These represent the first set of technologies we must keep.

Name the technologies that equip, find the technologies that form faith. Keep them, grow them, invest in them.

The second question, of which technologies facilitate collaboration, reminds of us of the inherent risks with unplugging completely, namely, the lost opportunity to be the hands and feet of Christ wherever there are hands and feet to be found.

If a piece of technology allows us to broadcast but not to work together, to sermonize but not to serve as a community, then it's of little value to a missional faith community. When thinking about how technology facilitates collaboration, we might recognize how much of collaboration is tied up with listening. We might see how texting has allowed us to listen more intently, how Tweeting has enabled us to widen the circle of voices that we're listening to, how podcasting has enabled us to hear the most thoughtful voices on the future of Christianity.

As with technologies that equip, know what technologies that help us to collaborate in being the church together. Throw out the technologies that allow us merely to "watch" church so that we might prioritize the tools that convene our community for mutual acts of service.

Which technologies equip? Which help to collaborate?

The way we answer these questions represents our path to hybrid ministry, an expression of church that is simultaneously online and offline, that is equally inclusive of the virtual and the on-site experience. If we engage these questions thoughtfully, we may even find that we need less technology than we anticipated. We may even find that new IT staff and budget commitments are unnecessary.

Tools that equip. Tools that collaborate. In a digital age ministry, these are the tools that we cannot do without.

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@ryanpanzer is the author of "Grace and Gigabytes," available now wherever books are sold.

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.