Ever Ancient, Ever New: A Calling to Digital-First Ministry

Nathan Webb

I was born of two lineages.

Half of my identity was born in the green pews of the small rural church. That part of me grew under the guidance of my Rev. Dad, who raised me alongside a burgeoning new church start. This is the part of me who flourished in the Youth Room–making powerful allusions and learning to play guitar to lead convicting altar calls. This half of Nathan would get the tap to ordained ministry at nine years old at a Christian Camp in North Carolina. He would try to avoid it, but learn that there is no outrunning that call. He would end up fulfilling that call.

But there is another half. This part of me first gained sentience in the magazine aisle of a Food Lion where I first picked up the monthly serialized manga magazine Shonen Jump. This part of me was forged over late-night car rides with my non-backlit GameBoy Color, trying to squint at the screen and play when we’d drive by a traffic light. This half would sneak downstairs and turn on the television, but not for raunchy adult shows like South Park, but the Adult Swim segment of Cartoon Network that would feature anime like Cowboy Bebop and Fullmetal Alchemist.

I was forged by two fires–fairly equally, I’d say.

But there was secretly a third portion of me that was more like the glue that held it together:

the digital age.

Amid late-night gaming sessions and Youth Group-led services alike, I was always drawn into a third aspect of my life–anything digital. I longed for the Internet. I yearned for the latest and greatest in technological achievements. As I grew up, I discovered that it wasn’t simply that I enjoyed technology… I thrived on it.

I felt more myself in an AIM chatroom than in small talk around the lunch table.

I laughed harder at moments shared across a webcam than out with friends.

Put simply, I was more me online.

At first, I felt guilty about that. After all, everyone told me to feel guilty about it. Technology is bad for you! It’ll rot your brain. Your eyes will dull if you sit too close to the TV. Lord knows what those cathode rays are doing to your skin.

But I began to discover that I wasn’t alone in that feeling. In fact, I wasn’t alone at all.

When I began to explore, I discovered there are so many others like me. Digital natives, as I like to describe them. People who are made more alive through digital means.

When the Church stumbles upon a people-group it has yet to reach, we are at our best when we embody the radical welcome of Christ and go to be with them. Jesus models for us the way that we are to go to the least, the last, and the lost. The ones whom the Church has left behind.

I often feel seen by the story of the Woman at the Well. Not so much the multiple husbands thing. But, when she gets it… when she really registers what Jesus is doing, she can’t wait to go and tell her people. She leaves right away to go and be an evangelist for this guy she met at the well. This guy who said it’s okay to be her. This guy, who knows my story already and came to talk to me–ME!–anyway. This guy who says he has a way for her to feel known like this and never thirst again for that sense of belonging.

I wonder what our modern wells might look like?

I wonder who needs to hear that they belong and are seen and known?

I wonder where they will go and share the good news once they hear it?

Like the Woman, I too have gone to the place where my people are–the digital natives. I am doing the work of testimony and community building. Specifically, we’re targeting nerds, geeks, and gamers, but that is flavor language for who we really are deep down… folks who are at the Well of the Internet.

Three convictions drive my leadership: digital presence is real presence; nerd culture is fertile spiritual soil; and radical welcome trumps geography.

If you take nothing else from my work, let it be permission to find God in your scroll and grace in your guild chat.

In contrast to many of my peers in this fellowship, I am more ‘-igital’ than ‘Phy-.’ In my search for other leaders in the space, I’ve found this to be true. Even still, the Phygital Fellows give me a tribe of dreamers proving church can be anywhere pixels meet people.

But I believe the testimony is spreading and we will have more people show up at the Well of the Internet. The dawn of the Digital-First Church is upon us.

It shouldn’t feel strange or foreign, but ever ancient, ever new.