The Advantage of Low-Tech Churches as Buildings Reopen

Blessed are the Low-Tech, when it comes to hybrid ministry. For theirs is the opportunity to be truly collaborative.

It's an exciting moment. With vaccinations now available to all American adults, it seems as though our "new normal" is closer than we may have anticipated. Churches continue to reopen their doors and create plans for hybrid ministry, a way of being church that blends the connections of the digital world with the strong community of the in-person church.

At this moment, there's a widespread perception that large, high-tech congregations with healthy media budgets are at an advantage. It seems logical that building a bridge between the online and the offline requires a skilled media production with access to Hollywood-quality studio equipment. After all, high-tech churches are the congregations that can create the "best" viewing experience: clear audio, crisp video, snappy transitions. Moreover, these congregations won't require pastors to be both preacher and video director at the same moment. Freed from multi-tasking, we imagine these leaders to be in a more advantageous position.

But if we take a critical look at why we are called to hybrid ministry, we might discover the opposite.

Hybrid ministry isn't the process of using digital technology for it's own sake. Instead, it's a calling to find a way of being church that is more inclusive and accessible. It's a summons to be more intentionally communal.

For these reasons, high-tech churches are actually at a disadvantage.

They might have the resources to create a polished and professional streaming "product," compelling enough to rival most viewing options on Netflix or HBO MAX. Indeed, who wouldn't want to watch a video with the production quality of a Joel Osteen?

Yet here's the paradox. The more polished our church services become, the more "professionalized" they are likely to be. In that sense, high-tech expressions of church are not particularly inclusive. Rather than creating a collaborative experience of Christian community, they create another piece of content for the consumption of the masses. Rather than extending an invitation into the shared work of the people, they create an unintentional buffer - between those sitting in the pews - and those watching from their couches.

For three reasons, low-tech churches, or those without vast media budgets and dedicated production staff, are at an advantage in the hybrid church.

First, low-tech churches are more likely to use Zoom as a platform for online worship. YouTube and Facebook Live may be the most common platforms for worship, but they tend to require event software integrations like OBS. A more ubiquitous tool that requires no additional software, Zoom just requires a device with a camera (an iPhone suffices) and audio input (a simple USB microphone is sufficient). Zoom creates a bridge between online and offline because it welcomes multiple voices. It's the only tool where that natively supports virtual worship leadership, that comes with the built-in ability to welcome digital lectors, prayers, cantors, and preachers. It's also the only tool where one can see the faces of all who gather online!

Low-tech churches will also have less tech equipment. Less equipment means more flexibility in configuring a worship space. A tripod-mounted iPad takes up less space than a studio soundboard with a full HD camcorder. This makes it possible to "record" the service from the front row or the middle of the sanctuary, whereas high-tech churches tend to record from the far back. Lower-tech churches thus provide a front row seat to worship, while high-budget congregations provide a seat in the back row, looking in.

Finally, lower-tech churches are more likely to rely on one of the key "low-tech" fundamentals of hybrid ministry: using inclusive language. Without professional video, they'll be more likely to greet online viewers. They'll be more likely to include their concerns in the prayers of the people, to speak directly to the online experience as part of the announcements. When it comes to creating an inclusive experience of those gathered online and offline, our words matter far more than what's on our screens. Low-tech ministries will be that much more likely to pay attention to this key aspect of inclusivity.

In recent conversations, I've heard some of those who lead small, rural and low-tech churches express a certain amount of resignation. It seems, in some cases, that they have already given up on hybrid ministry in their context.

Here's hoping they will find the strength and energy to attempt it. Here's praying that they won't squander their innate advantage.

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@ryanpanzer is the author of "Grace and Gigabytes"

Design Thinking and Church Community: Step Four - Prototype!

This post is the fifth in a six-part 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, and Ideating!

As we continue through our process of re-inventing church community through design thinking, we turn the corner from thinking to doing. In the "Prototyping" phase of design thinking, we seek to create usable versions of our top ideas to put into a pilot test.

According to interaction-design.org, step four of design thinking is the step we start to create solutions:

This [prototyping] is an experimental phase. The aim is to identify the best possible solution for each problem found. Your team should produce some inexpensive, scaled-down versions of the product (or specific features found within the product) to investigate the ideas you’ve generated. This could involve simply paper prototyping.

With prototyping, the way forward becomes immediately clear

But how do we know which of our brainstormed ideas deserve an "inexpensive, scaled-down" prototype?

Start by consolidating ideas. See which topics from the ideation phase are duplicates, or which ideas could be logically combined. If we merge the ideas where there is overlap, we will find that most of the heavy-lifting of prioritization happens automatically. Once your group has "de-duplicated" the list, you'll have to make some tough calls on which thoughts to advance.

Some groups simply vote on the ideas they would most like to prototype (see the Nominal Group Technique for more on effective voting processes). If everyone on the team is given one vote, several ideas usually emerge as consensus favorites. The challenge with voting is that it is subject to diluted results. If one idea gets 2 votes and 30 others get 1 vote, is it really the front-runner? To avoid complicating design thinking with the complexities of an electoral college-like system, you might prioritize with two questions:

• Which idea is the easiest to implement?

• Which idea will have the greatest impact?

If we prototype based on simplicity, while also prototyping based on impact, we are likely to balance the critical factors of feasibility and effectiveness. We may even find that the ideas with the greatest impact are also the ideas that are easiest to implement! These two questions should lead us into the development of no more than two prototypes for our design thinking test.

But what does prototyping actually look like, in the context of building Christian community? It's a valid question since we're likely designing a process or set of communal actions, rather than a tangible product.

The key to our prototype is that we should be able to use it in our pilot testing. So what we're seeking with our prototype are the parameters that will guide our test. While we can document these ideas in a word doc, outlining the who, what, when, where, and how of our prototype, many innovators will find it more enlightening to create a prototype in the format of a storyboard.

By actually drawing visual representations of our prototype, we can imagine creative ideas that the written word may not facilitate. We can imagine how our ideas will pull our community together, as we remember that this process focuses on real human beings, not textual abstractions! And we can imagine the best-case scenario for our ideas, appreciating how our community will benefit once our vision is realized.

Shelve any concerns about a lack of artistic aptitude. Ignore any preconceived notions of what a storyboard must look like. We're church leaders, not animators for Pixar or The Simpsons. Stick-figures are just fine. Clip art and stock images from Google search are completely adequate. And we don't need expensive software. There are countless free storyboarding apps on the web. I simply use Canva or Google Slides. The tools are unimportant. This is not a high-tech, visually appealing process. It is a collaborative, imaginative process, one that requires creativity, not artistic skill.

The final output of the prototyping phase is a storyboard that guides us through the implementation of our ideas, illustrating a successful outcome of the pilot test.

Having created our prototypes in response to our ideation lists, we now must seek to put our ideas into a pilot test. We look towards testing, the final phase of design thinking, and the subject of our next post.

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