Listening to the Current Reality
Few gaps offer as many challenges and opportunities as addressing the intersection of digital space and church life and mission. The past decade has seen a substantive transformation in churches worldwide, accelerated in many ways by the pandemic. The depth and rapidity of this transformation pose a critical tension between the existential and practical: the fundamental need to reconceptualize our understanding of church forms competing with the urgent need among churches for resources and guidance.
- Opportunities
Delegates commonly acknowledged the potential for digital platforms to help churches reach communities that are unable or unwilling to engage in traditional church forms. From gamers to LGBT to disability communities, digital churches provide low-barrier communities for those unwilling or unable to attend traditional churches. Traditional churches can simultaneously deploy digital tools to both reach their community and serve their members. Through social media, streaming, and apps, churches can weave members together, informing and discipling through frequent touchpoints. - Obstacles
Multiple challenges exist that speak to both the novelty of digital church forms and the broader cultural and societal impact that digital tools and spaces have on the Church. Central is the underlying societal impact of digital tools that feed our temptations towards hyper-individualism, foster polarization through forming echo chambers, and hamper our relationships and rest by constantly connecting us to news and entertainment. This invariably impacts both those in our pews and those we seek to reach, necessitating a change in both discipleship and evangelism strategy.
The inherent tension of social media’s democratized nature is also present. On the one hand, it offers a voice to those on the margins or outside historic institutions, yet it also seems to feed our draw to celebrity and tribalism. The low barriers to entry foster innovative and gifted communicators’ finding audiences, yet equally low accountability creates environments where error and abuse can flourish.
Churches are struggling to navigate the inherent tension of digital tools, which simultaneously connect and isolate society. Digital platforms are opening means for reaching new communities, transcending international boundaries, and enabling the church to frequently engage and be engaged by its people throughout the week rather than just on Sundays. Yet, this connectivity is plagued by rising social isolation in communities and churches.
To capitalize on potential while mitigating harm, two critical categories of needs are identified:
- The need for a new theology and/or missiology of church for a digital age: With significant tension between innovation and tradition, church leaders need a constructive ision for how the historic rituals, practices, and sacraments of the Church manifest in digital forms of Church. Connected to this vision is theological reflection on how digital tools integrate with our models and practices of preaching discipleship and evangelism. Because God’s presence pervades both physical and digital spaces, a critical first step for the Church is understanding how and helping pastors and leaders in this effort.
- The need for practical resources, training, and investment: This is vital to equip churches better to engage digital spaces and tools with greater missional and pastoral effectiveness. There is an urgent call for renewed investment in resources and infrastructure to engage better, equip, and deploy churches across diverse contexts for greater effectiveness in digital church life and mission. The unprecedented rate of innovation combined with an eroding reliance upon traditional church forms requires greater urgency upon Christian institutions, organizations, and denominations. In many global regions, urgent investment is required where a reliable digital connection is unaffordable. In more developed regions, this urgency is for resources where access has far surpassed church discipleship and mission.
Looking forward, the concern is voiced over the ongoing existential division among Christians over whether digital church forms are possible. The resulting divisiveness of digital and analog can sour attempts to find solutions, forcing polarisation where both sides become defensive and dismissive of their ecclesiology. Leadership is needed to foster conversation, generate useful resources, and model commitment to mission, doctrine, and the Church.
Imagining a Preferred Reality
While the rapid pace of digital innovation makes conceptualizing life in 2050 an evolving challenge, delegates focused their imagination on how churches and leaders can tap the potential of digital technologies, solve the underlying practical and theological challenges, and utilize digital tools to draw together global Christians for collaboration. Thus, the potential for churches to be drivers of digital experimentation, leveraging their authority and doctrine to provide necessary accountability while fostering cultures of innovation, is imagined. Emblematic of this experimentation, delegates pointed to the power of AI to address many of our current linguistic and cultural barriers. Whether through sermon translation or resource generation, it is hoped that expanding AI tools might enable greater unity in an increasingly global and multi-ethnic world.
- Focusing on the fourfold vision of Lausanne, a future is imagined where digital forms of church expand our capacity, effectiveness, and collaboration. Through making believing communities accessible to people around the world, digital church forms can offer a new frontier in reaching every person with the gospel. These broader connections can also help us understand each other better and understand the differences between regional demands within the ministry.
- As digital tools facilitate greater resource sharing, stronger communication networks, and online ministry training, there is immense potential to equip and empower leaders around the world who otherwise face logistical, financial, and cultural barriers. These broader connections can also help us better understand each other and the differences between regional demands within ministry.
- Through expanding cross-cultural and cross-regional resource sharing, digital church forms can offer the necessary tools and the equipping for effective discipleship. As digital tools revolutionize how churches disciple, the challenge for leaders lies in embracing innovative digital practices while staying resolutely focused on the goals and purposes of discipleship. With ongoing reflection, feedback, and collaboration across churches and ministries, delegates imagined a future where church leaders uncover a means of integrating digital discipleship with a robust vision of Christian formation and human flourishing.
- Digital church forms can identify and empower a new generation of leaders both inside the church and in every sector of society by utilizing new tools for education and training. Just as online learning is revolutionizing theological education, increased global connection opens new frontiers for leadership development, support, and accountability. Remote and/or under-resourced churches can utilize online tools to serve their people and find networks for ongoing guidance and pastoral community. This capability also allows those unable to attend service to remain connected to a community.
- Through connecting churches to global networks and communities, digital church forms can equip Christians to enter every sphere of society. Beyond equipping Christians, many delegates focused on the potential for digital church forms to welcome seekers who otherwise may not attend traditional church. This dual potential to send and welcome reflects the unique impact digital church forms can have in advancing the Great Commission towards 2050.
Overall, delegates expressed excitement over the potential for greater connectivity of churches and ministries worldwide. Undaunted by the challenges of constructing a new digital ecclesiology, delegates looked to a future where these existential questions regarding the church and its mission would spur a new era of constructive theological, missiological, and ethical dialogue.
Creating a Way to Close the Gap
Achieving the vision of a new digital ecclesiology for 2050 requires the following collaborative works:
- The development of a robust theological and ethical framework for digital church forms: A central concern in this theological and ethical work is the need for greater clarity on how the digital and physical relate within church life, practice, and belief. As a new frontier of digital theology opens, churches need help understanding what is necessarily incarnational, what can be missionally expedient, and what can be digitized. To avoid an all-or-nothing mentality, substantive theological efforts as to how the two can work together is an urgent priority in the decade ahead.
- Training around digital discipleship: Given concerns over the challenges of accountability, echo chambers, and social media behavior, delegates recognized the urgent need to equip pastors to understand better and disciple their members. As digital tools and platforms continue to permeate our lives, critical training is necessary for pastors to speak prophetically, pastorally, and intelligently.
- Formulating best practices or guidelines for effective digital ministry and mission: As the simultaneous pace of innovation and uncertainty of ministry effectiveness of digital tools can paralyze church leaders, guidance is needed to navigate this season for both pastors and ministries. A range of resources is required, such as practical guides to digital discipleship, ethical means of stewarding data, and a how/why for utilizing social media for church outreach. In countless areas, education and training programs are needed to incorporate digital tools to lay a foundation for pastors and leaders to engage in the digital mission effectively.
- Constructing and maintaining lasting digital communities: Beyond digital churches, there is a call for institutions and organizations to foster digital communities where leaders can dialogue with and support one another in common mission. Given the power of digital spaces to transcend localities, creating these communities is a fairly easy priority that reflects a powerful initial step towards effective collaboration.
- Rethinking our missiological paradigms and training: The Church of 2050 must prepare young leaders to be digital pastors and missionaries. Steeped in a digital world, this next generation is well situated to lead the church into a digital future but it needs to be engaged, discipled, and empowered. This requires proactive investment in identifying the right voices, inviting them into the conversation, and releasing them to effective mission with support and credibility.
Communicating a Prayerful Proposal
To achieve the collaborative efforts suggested above, there is a need to leverage the wide range of industries, networks, and institutions across the global Church. For digital church forms to thrive as part of the Great Commission, there is a need for the entire body of Christ to collaborate—localising expertise and resources. There are multiple areas where leadership is needed in this collaborative effort. These include:
- Christian institutions: This is core to the future success of collaborative action. Key institutions and organizations with established and respected track records of missional and pastoral faithfulness are needed, as they can be a necessary gateway for churches to embrace innovation. These Christian institutions have the potential to contribute to credible collaborative efforts, serve as facilitators for ongoing discussion, and provide core curricular resources for this area.
- Churches, denominations, and church networks: It is critical to include pastors and other church leaders in understanding how digital church forms are functioning in practice. While digital innovation is rapid, implementation will only progress at the rate that churches and their networks are willing to participate, lead, and sustain the effort.
- Marketplace leaders: They are key as both drivers of digital innovation and a means of resourcing global efforts. As the marketplace continues to lead in developing digital tools and platforms, marketplace leaders are vital interpreters for the Church. Beyond contributing resources to develop necessary infrastructure, this wisdom in navigating the digital future is often missing when the conversation remains confined to the ministry ecosystem.
Beyond these areas of specialization, it is agreed that a central element of the “who” for effective collaboration is the need for effective partnership in two areas recently defined by suspicion and tension. The first is between the practical and intellectual, bringing those leading through innovation with those constructing the necessary theological and missiological paradigms. The second is between the early adopters and the suspicious, a gap that often creates suspicion and dismissiveness rather than genuine dialogue. There are valid concerns of the twin dangers of unbridled innovation and unthinking resistance, both likely limiting if not undermining any future collaborative action. For any future success, key church leaders must navigate this tension by modelling constructive work that is simultaneously innovative and thoughtful.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to team members Gabriel Tomiani and Stephen Scott, who helped organize and lead the room in Incheon. Additionally, thank you to the leaders at each table who helped facilitate discussion, transcribe key ideas, and contribute to the AI summaries.
Authors
Darrell Bock
Darrell Bock is the executive director of Cultural Engagement at The Hendricks Center and Senior Research Professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary.
Rev. Enoch Won Jun Lee
Rev. Enoch Won Jun Lee is the director of House Church Ministries International in Southern Africa and the Representative of House Church Ministries International for the Lausanne Movement.
Andrew MacDonald
Andrew MacDonald is the associate director of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center and a guest faculty member at Wheaton College.