The Phygital Fellows gathered over the course of 18 months to consider the intersection of new digital technologies, physical environments, ancient and ancestral wisdom, and their impact on preaching and Gospel proclamation. In that time, we have learned from each other, created together, and sat together in the honest discomfort of not knowing. Our time together has been rich, generative, and at times genuinely difficult. And one of the most significant and lasting outcomes of the fellowship has been the questions.
Every time we gathered, certain tensions kept resurfacing. Not the same surface-level debates the church has been having about digital ministry for the past decade, but something underneath those. Something more honest and more difficult. What does it actually mean to create in a space built to reward outrage? What makes a digital space soulful, and who gets to decide? Who builds the infrastructure, and for whom? And underneath all of it, a question about liberation: are we actually free in these spaces, or are we replicating the same patterns we said we were trying to disrupt?
Those tensions have contributed to what we are calling the Phygital Conversations.
The Phygital Conversations are four broad discussions that emerged from the curiosities and concerns that continued to surface in the gatherings and collective work of our Fellows. They speak to the full arc of what phygital ministry actually requires: how we create, where we gather, what we build, and whose freedom we are building toward. Our Fellows have begun to take up these Conversations, and a significant portion of the Phygital Gathering in Berkeley will be devoted to expanding them. But we also want to hear from our readers here on Substack how these four conversations resonate with you, your work, and your context. So we are introducing them here over the next few days as we expand the phygital circle.
CONVERSATION 1: Content Creation
What do we actually mean when we say “content creation”? Are we creating, curating, or simply commenting on what is already happening in the world? Does the distinction matter? The algorithm rewards outrage and reactivity, and ministry leaders are not exempt from its pull. This Conversation asks what it looks like to keep your soul intact while working in that environment, and whether there is a meaningful line between creating something and feeding something that already exists. The phygital bias may be toward building from the ground up. Where does reaction end and creation begin?
CONVERSATION 2: Digital-First Spaces
The debate over whether digital-first spaces are “real” community has gone on long enough. This Conversation moves past it. If we accept that these spaces are legitimate, the harder questions open up: what do mercy, justice, and spiritual formation actually look like inside them? Digital-first spaces often carry a double burden, spending so much energy proving their legitimacy that the people inside them get left behind. There is a deeper ecclesiological question here. When does formation become commission? What does social holiness require when the community gathers on a screen?
CONVERSATION 3: Infrastructure Building
Church buildings tell the story. You can look at when a congregation built its sanctuary and read the cultural moment: cathedrals in eras of artistry, functional boxes in the eighties, suburban community centers during the megachurch era. The question this Conversation asks is whether digital infrastructure is just the next iteration of that same pattern, or whether it represents something genuinely different. The phygital frame might suggest this particular posture: we build as long as it serves the people we are building for. The moment it does not, we continue to be builders rather than caretakers of what no longer serves. Can we hold that posture honestly, knowing everything we build is temporary?
CONVERSATION 4: Integrated Liberation
This is the Conversation the Fellows have been in longest. The questions of dignity, agency, and freedom have been present in our work since the beginning. What changes now is where we are taking them: not as a governing framework imposed from the outside, but as values woven through everything else we are doing. Technology follows the same patterns of capitalism and racism that need to be subverted. What does subversion look like from inside those systems? What have we already seen that tells us integrated liberation is not just possible but already at work somewhere? That is the question this Conversation is trying to answer.
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These four Conversations are not parallel tracks. They are more like layers. Content creation happens inside digital-first spaces, which are built on infrastructure, all of which either embodies liberation or does not. You cannot fully hold one without the others.
The Phygital Fellows have held these conversations, in various forms, for almost two years. Now we are inviting you—yes, you reading this post—to join in the discussion and discovery. These are questions the whole church, established and innovating, is living inside of, whether we know it or not. This initiative is an effort to ask them out loud and gather leaders and practitioners around them.
We will share an introductory Substack post for each Conversation in the days ahead. The posts are meant to be generative, not definitive. They are meant to open the question, to make sure we are asking it well, and to consider its import to the phygital landscape. We are carrying these Conversations into the Berkeley Gathering, but we hope you will carry them with us as well.
One gathering is not enough. These conversations need more voices, more contexts, more honest friction than any single room can generate. That is why this Substack exists. The phygital world is our parish. This is our work.