The Pastorian Playbook for Digital Ministry

James from PASTORIA

“Let’s say that Christian discipleship had like 10 levels with level 10 being as deep as you can get with Jesus and level 1 being you are just starting out. We focus all of our efforts on levels 1 and 2.” That’s what one of the leaders of a popular non-United Methodist local church in Los Angeles in the late 90’s and early 2000’s with an ethnically diverse membership in the thousands and with the average age of a worship service attendee in their late 20’s told me at a small gathering of clergy, a long time ago.

Given the church’s success with younger people, it was a proven strategy. Still, so much of the critique against that church from many of my colleagues on the United Methodist side of things was about how their worship was not really good worship, their preaching was not really good preaching, and their theology was not really good theology. Well, sure - these are the sensibilities of church people who like to keep things between levels 5 and 10.

Today, it seems that we find ourselves in a different era: the digital era. And, in this era, the strategy is a little different. That is, to resonate with people beyond our educated, Sunday-centric, gathering-based, building-required, committee-directed selves, the church of today and tomorrow must focus on levels 0 and below. Here’s what that looks like:

1. Define “ministry” broadly

Sure, “ministry” is like a worship service, a gathering of people studying the bible, a program of offering food without cost to people in need - just the usual activities of a local church. But, “ministry” is also the process by which people make a difficult decision about the health of their body, the conviction that people get on vacation that leads them to make a change when they get back, and the planning to quit one’s job in order to re-make their career and way of making a living.

2. Understand what “ministry” does

From an analog point of view, we could say that ministry is what evokes a sense of God or, “the sacred,” through musical expression, community, as well as public advocacy. We could say the same or similar for what ministry does in the digital era - and much more. “Ministry,” or activities that evoke such a sense of God, are much more varied - from participating in chat-based forums to posting short-form, me-facing videos to playing online, multi-player games, etc. These may not be the same exact activities of a typical local church. But, they achieve the same or similar effect as those of a typical local church.

3. Contextualize “ministry” to a specific experience

Given this, digital ministry is not necessarily identified by a group of people or a set of values. Instead, it is “native” to the areas or experiences of life where a ministry presence would be needed and helpful. A good way of thinking about this is to consider the difference between Jesus’ ministry with his “disciples” (as in, those who have publicly committed to being a follower) vs. with anyone else who needed or were helped by his ministry (such as the people at the wedding or the people who were healed).

It took a while for me to understand. But, this became apparent to me way back when I was in college and young adult ministry. The perennial problem of, “how do we stay in touch with our college kids,” came to intersect with, “how do we get young people more involved?” In thinking about this, I observed something: they are involved in (and passionate about) things, just not church. So, I decided to come up with a “digital magazine” (aka a blog) for the ministry and I asked these students who were far away to write about things of their choice - they just had to be involved in and passionate about it.

Write, they did… about architecture, photography, video games, etc.

These were all things that may not have been about faith, upfront. But, what I realized later on was that their involvement was much like discipleship and their passion was much like faith. And, because of that, things like calling, compassion, purpose, meaning, dedication, and salvation could all actually be easily seen within such a context of their own. In other words, they could become ministers in their own way living out their ministry through their own life.

This is how ministry (via the technologies of today and tomorrow) is at level 0 and below: you point out how people are already religious… just in their own way. And, you show them how to see themselves as a minister in that context in the Jesus way. It’s not about getting to a “higher quality” of ministry or discipleship as it might be deemed in our usual institutional context. Instead, it’s about seeing new institutions being built in real-time for new versions of faith for today and tomorrow.