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!

Design Thinking and Church Community: Step Five - Test!

This post is the sixth and final post in a series on building Digital Church Community with Design Thinking, a series responding to the challenges of building Christian community in a pandemic. Be sure to check out the intro, as well as our guide to Empathizing, Defining, Ideating, and Prototyping!

As we continue through our process of re-inventing church community through design thinking, we make a decisive pivot from the theoretical to the concrete. In the "Testing" phase of design thinking, we test and measure the effectiveness of our prototypes.

According to interaction-design.org, step five of design thinking puts our prototype into a pilot test:

Evaluators rigorously test the prototypes. Although this is the final phase, design thinking is iterative: Teams often use the results to redefine one or more further problems. So, you can return to previous stages to make further iterations, alterations and refinements...

Once we start our test, it's all downhill from here.

With enough intentionality, our prototypes should lend themselves to an easy testing format. If we created visual storyboards, we should have a clear idea of who will be involved with the test, what the test might look like, and how success might appear. But to run an effective test, it's helpful to clarify a few parameters:

First, what is the medium of the test? In this time of social distancing, we are likely executing our test virtually. We need to ensure all parties have access to the right tools, at the right level of permissions. What software do we need? How do we ensure everyone involved in running the test has administrative access to these tools? How do we ensure everyone participating in the test has end-user access?

Second, how do we get the word out? We can't run a test if nobody shows up (though nobody showing up might indicate that we need to go back to the Ideate phase!). If we're testing something new with virtual worship, we need to make sure to communicate the change ahead of time, describing any new expectations for involvement. Simplicity is key. If someone needs to click a link to participate in the test, make sure that the link is easy to access, that it is communicated through multiple channels.

Third, what are we going to measure? Testing is not a subjective process. It involves the rigorous collection of data. Before the test starts, we need to understand what we will measure, and how we will find the metrics. Are we testing page views or web interactions? Participation or attendance? With YouTube views or Google Analytics? Be specific about the numbers you will collect, how you will collect them, and over what duration.

Finally, how long do we allow the test to run? This is typically the most ambiguous question related to design thinking and church community. Do we run a test for one Sunday, or do we run it for a month? Do we run it for one worship service, or for our entire church community? To determine these answers, it's helpful to consider what constitutes a valid test - not a rejection/acceptance of our design, but enough data to reevaluate our problem statement and begin the design thinking process anew.

To that extent, we should run our test for as long as it takes to initiate a new round of design thinking, to truly make our process iterative. In most situations, this means allowing a test to run for a month or more, so that it runs through a full communications cycle in the life of the congregation, so that it engages all regular worship attendees. With four weeks or more of data, we can gather enough perspectives so as to begin a new phase of empathizing and defining.

Iteration is always the key to testing, testing is never about reaching a finish line. Design thinking, particularly in the context of building Christian community, is never about delivering a finished product or a silver-bullet solution.

A wise pastor recently shared with me how the use of the word "solution" can be problematic in the church. We're not in the business of solutions. We're seeking to live more fully into our new normal, harnessing the gifts that God has given to us and to our community so that we can bring God's healing and redeeming word to a hurting world. In the context of building Christian community, a test can never "fail" if it leads us to further conversation and discovery, if it helps us to move more decisively into this new normal.

So when is your test done? It's done when you're ready to start over, taking all that you have learned, and committing once again to the work of empathy and listening. It's done when you acknowledge that our designs our never complete, that our community is always changing, that our call as the church is ever-evolving. As church leaders, we design. The spirit dances. And on we go.

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