If you want a window into how my brain works, here’s a confession: I’m not much of a Wordle person. I admire folks who can land on the perfect five-letter guess, but that’s not me. I’m much more of a Connections person (and honestly, I’m glad there’s only one puzzle a day, or I’d lose hours to it!).
Wordle rewards precision. Connections rewards perspective — the ability to see relationships and patterns where others might see only randomness. And that’s how I approach ministry and community: looking for the threads that tie things together, weaving them into something bigger, more beautiful, and more life-giving.
Why “Phygital” Matters
We live in a time when our lives no longer fit neatly into categories of “physical” and “digital.” Our communities are phygital: embodied in coffee shops and sanctuaries, but also sustained through texts, group chats, livestreams, and social media.
For the church, that means something profound. Ministry is no longer confined to Sunday mornings in a building. It’s happening in Discord servers, in YouTube comments, in Zoom prayer circles, and in the moment when someone comes across a TikTok that makes them feel seen.
This doesn’t make physical gatherings less important. Far from it. It means the two belong together. Physical community grounds us; digital community expands us. Together, they create possibilities we couldn’t have imagined just a generation ago.
The Work of Connecting
Over the past few years, I’ve discovered that one of my callings is to spot the threads others might miss — to notice the places where ideas, people, and practices overlap — and then to weave those threads into something surprising and strong.
At First United Methodist Church Richardson, that’s meant helping our online ministry grow far beyond its beginnings. What once was a single livestream has become a full weekly rhythm: a pre-produced worship service on YouTube, a live broadcast every Sunday, and a channel that now houses an expanding library of digital resources. Together, those touchpoints gather more than a thousand people each week — a reminder that a digital sanctuary can be just as holy as a physical one.
It’s also reshaped our storytelling. What began as an audio-only podcast is now a full audio-and-video podcast that reaches a wider, more diverse audience. Through the More Than Sunday podcast, I’ve been able to form creative partnerships that extend far beyond our church walls:
● With Austin Street Center, producing a season that lifted up the realities of homelessness and invited us to be part of real solutions.
● With local restaurants and nonprofits, highlighting how they create welcome and belonging in unexpected ways.
● With fellow phygital voices like Alec and the Nearness program, helping spiritually curious people find community right where they are.
● And with Tamice, another Phygital Fellow, as they launched their first audio-and-video podcast, carrying their prophetic voice into new digital spaces.
None of these projects started as grand strategies. They began with a simple instinct: notice the threads, imagine what might happen if they were woven together, and then invite others into the weaving. And when those threads come together, the fabric of community becomes stronger, more resilient, and more alive.
Why I’m Here
When I was first invited to become part of the Phygital Preaching Fellows, my first instinct was to look around and wonder if I belonged. After all, I’m not a pastor. I’m not a theologian. I don’t carry the formal credentials that many of my colleagues in this space hold with such wisdom and grace.
What I do carry, though, is a deep conviction that the Spirit is doing something new where the physical and digital overlap — and that my role is to help connect people, places, and practices that don’t always seem like they belong together.
I don’t come as someone with all the answers or with traditional ministry credentials. I come with curiosity, with questions, and with a deep hope for the church in all its forms. I believe connection itself is a kind of ministry — that building bridges is holy work.
Being a connector means I often find myself at intersections. Sometimes it’s messy. But it’s also where I get to witness the beauty of unexpected friendships forming, new collaborations taking shape, and people realizing they’re not as alone as they thought they were.
And to me, that is the good news: that in every new connection, we discover we are part of something larger, more beautiful, and more alive than we knew. Maybe that’s why I’ll always choose connections over precision. Ministry, at its heart, is not about landing on the perfect five-letter answer. It’s about noticing the patterns, weaving the threads, and helping others see that what might look random or isolated is actually part of a bigger picture.
The Spirit is still weaving. Our job is simply to play along.
 | A guest post by
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Thankful for a connector in our space! Nothing excites me more for the future of ministry online than people willing to see the possibilities when we share space together.
Seth Godin talks about the fact that the gatekeepers are no longer needed. Anyone can write and publish a book, host a podcast, make a movie, record music, build a community, etc. But one of the things that gatekeepers used to do (or at least help with) was making connections. That is something the digital world makes possible as well, but it is IMMENSELY helpful to have people like you putting the thought, care, time, and effort into this work.