How to Be the Church in the Attention Economy

More eyeballs equal more profit.

That's the business model for today's social media landscape, where companies like Meta (f.k.a. Facebook) and Twitter capitalize on our attention and focus. That's not to say our relationship with social media companies is entirely one-sided. Users of social media sites do, in fact, derive benefits: connection, community, and even friendship. And there are obvious benefits to Christian communities, particularly during a pandemic. Through social media, we can continue to proclaim the Word and gather communities for service and fellowship, even when it is unsafe to gather in large, public assemblies.

Still, there is something unsavory about the attention economy. The more time we spent on social media, the more social media companies profit. This creates an obvious incentive for tech giants to continue to commodity our focus. Non-chronological news feeds, infinite scrolling, and suggested posts have turned social media apps into a form of slot machine, where each scroll of the feed and refresh of the page rewards our minds with a fresh hit of dopamine. It seems that each year, social media companies find a new gimmick to keep me on their sites for longer. This partially explains why Facebook's average revenue per user (ARPU) has increased by over 600% since 2011, with Mark Zuckerberg now making an average of $32 per each American Facebook user each year.

With new user adoption slowing, there are signs that we are leveling off in our daily usage of social media. These trends will lead the Zuckerbergs of the world to find more hacks for keeping us on the site, viewing content and videos but also clicking sponsored posts, reading comments and stories but also seeing highly targeted adverts.

This creates a dilemma for today's church leader. How do we convene online community when doing so fills the coffers of Facebook and Twitter? How do we gather online community around the Gospel when the risks of excess time online are thoroughly-documented?

We might answer this question by arguing that it is unethical for churches to congregate on social media sites. This perspective, known as the "Luddite" position, ignores the reality of relationships formed on these sites. As a consequence, Luddites miss a prime opportunity for ministry in a digital age.

Similarly, we might answer this question by stating that digital should just be a means of church communication. This perspective was the implicit standard in the prepandemic church. However, social media should not be viewed as just another bulletin board, pointing to an experience of church that happens offline. For better or worse, digital spaces are the meeting grounds for Millennials and Generation Z. This requires us to take seriously how to establish and strengthen relationships online and offline.

There is a better way for today's church leader. Rather than dismissing social media outright, or relegating it to the role of a high-tech bulletin board pointing to offline spaces, we ought to address the attention economy through practices of faith-based, digital Sabbath.

A faith-based digital Sabbath is an online experience that disrupts the noise of digital life through the integration of scripture, reflection, and prayer. This might take the form of a scrollable Instagram post, an email newsletter, or a standalone app. It might appear as a video reflection, a podcast, or a blog post. Regardless of format, faith-based digital Sabbath invites social media connections to pause, to recenter ourselves on God's Word, and to radiate God's grace and mercy outward.

Secular digital Sabbaths exist. The Calm app is one of my favorites. But it is only through a faith-based digital Sabbath that we can regain a sense of self-awareness that makes us more present to ourselves and the needs of our neighbor.

Through the combination of prayer and practice, we turn our attention away from the self-centeredness created by the news feed and hear how God is calling us into concrete acts of service for the good of this world. It is only through a faith-based digital Sabbath that we can break the cycle of mindless social media scrolling, reorienting ourselves to God's work in our lives so that we may live lives of faithful discipleship.

Faith-based digital Sabbath will not change the steady growth of the attention economy. But the combination of scripture, reflection, and prayer gives us a momentary reprieve from its advance. As we partake in this experience of God's rest, we cease to become a commodity, even if momentarily. We are formed, instead, for Christian community.

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For some of my favorite examples of a faith-based digital Sabbath, check out:

• Luther Seminary's God Pause

• Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations

• Kate Bowler's Instagram

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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.

Book Review: The Analog Church

If you've followed this blog or read "Grace and Gigabytes," you know that I'm an advocate of technology in the church, and you yourself are at least somewhat interested in the topic. In thinking about the church's digital (or, hybrid) future, it's interesting to consider what tools and tactics will help our communities to be more faithful, inclusive, and collaborative. But it's imperative to occasionally pause to ask the big question: What if the church shouldn't have a digital future?

What if the pursuit of Christian community in digital spaces is a fruitless pursuit of "relevance," a distraction from the true work of proclaiming God's word, administering the sacraments, and making Christ known to our communities?

"Analog Church" by Jay Y. Kim, which was published only two weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic, presents a compelling critique of technology in the church, an argument borne out of the idea that so much of our technology is in service to relevance, as opposed to transcendence. The book suggests that every time we seek to use tech to reach more people, we lose focus on the local character of the church, sacrificing real connections for a shallow form of click-based community.

Jay Y. Kim argues convincingly that digital platforms cannot be the only location of Christian community. The corporate acts of singing, praying, and learning are fundamental to the Christian tradition. There is, in fact, something that we lose when prayers and hymnody, scriptures and teachings, are reduced to memes and posts on social media. There is something that we miss out on when church becomes a passive, consumer-oriented experience.

Yes, as a church leader I want to serve and reach as many people as I can with the gospel. This is true of most church leaders I have known. But often, the desire to "serve and reach as many as we can" in the digital age devolves into methods that essentially equate to "what's the fastest, most efficient way for us to get bigger?"

-Jay Y. Kim, "The Analog Church"

Still, I have questions. The author suggests that "digital" is by definition an antonym of "real," that our virtual connections are, in their essence, fake. I'm unconvinced. As Riverside Church Digital Minister Jim Keat has said, digital is not the opposite of real. Digital is the opposite of physical.

Can we know real people, can we connect in real places, can we learn about real things in a digital form of church? Of course we can.

For me, the question is not whether we should be using digital technology - the question is how we will blend the invitational character of the online world with the connective core of our face-to-face experiences.

To that end, Jay Y. Kim's work is indispensable. "Analog Church" gives us a set of signposts for navigating the potential and the pitfalls of church in the digital age. It warns us of church as a "consumer" experience, it steers us away from individualistic Christianity. It cautions us against reading scripture out of context, or only attending to fleeting aspects of a church's life together.

In this moment, so many of us are looking to the future, considering how the tech we have relied upon in the last 13 months informs our ministry and mission. I remain convinced that the best model for doing church is a blend of offline and online. For anyone who believes the same, "Analog Church" is simply a must-read.

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@ryanpanzer is the author of "Grace and Gigabytes"