Digital Communities: Collaborate Gap Summary

The digital space is presumed to be hostile and inhuman. It is unfriendly to digital immigrants, who find it difficult to navigate. To create a kind and safe digital community, this gap collaborative group gathered during the Fourth Lausanne Congress to listen to God and to each other to close this gap. The group was made up of digital evangelists, digital natives, media and technology experts, NGO leaders, theologians, workplace evangelists, and youth pastors. The gap matters because many within the group are either already in various digital communities and want to evangelise further. Also, the group brings an understanding of the complexity of digital communities and hopes to engage theologically and practically with other like-minded people.

Listening to the Current Reality

With the rise of digitality in every part of our lives, we are aware of the following issues that may affect our Christian witness and evangelism in digital communities: 

1. The digital space is inaccessible due to language, class, disability, governmental censorship, and generational differences.
2. A digital divide may be caused by inaccessibility and ideological differences, as well as the gerrymandering of similar social groups online.
3. Funding and leadership issues raise questions, such as who controls the data and how Christian leaders, including influencers, may bring initiatives to prevent marginalisation online due to unequal power dynamics in the digital space.
4. Transparency in designing digital platforms, and generating and prioritising certain information by algorithm is needed.
5. There is a tendency for passive data consumption instead of connecting with people online/offline.

In other words, we ask if digital communities are not merely a substitution or a superior form to physical communities. If so, how can we, as Christian leaders, display Christ online while not neglecting the change in communication patterns on digital platforms? Contextualisation is an important aspect to consider for our individual mission fields because there may be various reasons people choose to engage with digital communities instead of physical ones. As such, we do not propose an either-or approach. Rather, the future of mission will merely be involved with digital communities. However, we want to be sensitive to people’s preference to gather in digital communities and refine our digital presence and mission strategy to better pastor and/or outreach to these communities.

Imagining a Preferred Reality

We imagine the future of the digital community will display gospel-focussed messages. While uplifting the role of evangelism, a digital community should treat social responsibility as equally important. This prevents the unconscious colonisation or triumphalism imposed on the groups we intend to reach.

Mindful of unity in diversity in different digital communities, we hope to create a space that is true, honest, and respectful to others. Aligning with Lausanne’s fourfold vision, an ideal digital community should:

1. Contextualise the gospel for every person engaging online: This implies that we should be sensitive to the generational divide caused by different preferences between parents and children, as well as digital immigrants and digital natives. Communities are built by people. We should identify talents and lift voices to ensure such communities can be self-sustaining and flourishing long-term.

2. Make disciples for every people and place: The purpose of forming and sustaining a digital community is to build relationships and not merely passively consume data. Following the example of Jesus, who spent time with his disciples, the discipleship in digital communities should be organic. Thus, an authentic digital community should be like open source platforms that can be contributed by everyone in the group. Even if digital immigrants prefer to connect with people offline, we should value their opinions and, if they are willing, provide relevant training to help them build relationships or even evangelise online. The skills to be developed may be imitated and transformed based on the contexts of those groups.

3. Be Christ-like leaders in digital communities: Our actions and speech online should create a safe digital space for theological discussions and aspirations to draw people to Christ because of our good deeds (Matt 5:14-16). Meanwhile, although the current major phenomenon online is that people are drawn by certain influencers to know about the gospel, we should resist the temptation to point people to ourselves instead of God. The Holy Spirit enables and empowers our work online and gives wisdom for a particular mission strategy. It is always a good reminder that whatever we do, we do it for God (Col 3:23).

4. Kingdom impact in all parts of digital space: While treasuring our digital communities, we should be sensitive to the guidance of the Holy Spirit to evangelise the un/de-churched online, with respect and mutual understanding of diverse economic, cultural, social, and political backgrounds. Our digital evangelism should not be forceful. Even though someone may prefer not to talk about the gospel, we trust that God is at work and in his own time.

As a Lausanne Movement gap emphasising communality, we understand that this vision can only be realised with collaborative actions—collective discernment, prayers, and partnership with other catalysts and evangelists. Our first collaborator should be God the Creator and the Sustainer (Heb 1:1-3), who gives us the privilege to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Creating a Way to Close the Gap 

To move forward with our collaborative action, we suggest creating and sustaining digital communities with the following criteria: accessibility, a space of mutual learning and respect, ownership, safety, and depth. Digital communities ideally should be accessible to all, without economic, social, or political inequality. The digital space where communities are situated should allow participants to learn from and respect each other. We should not think of ourselves more highly than we are (Rom 12:3) to avoid digital colonialism. Rather, we should genuinely listen to one another—their stories, their culture, and their faith. Authentic digital communities should be self-sustained financially and their ideology is not merely guided by one influencer. Communities belong to all members, and we should seek to let everyone feel seen and heard if they choose to express themselves. That said, the communities should provide a safe environment to facilitate conversations grounded in respect and good faith. While the norm of anonymity and hate speech derived from hidden identity may still exist, we should not take it as a norm of digital communities. As Christians, we are called to bring alternative witness in a hostile world, including the digital context, so that people of other faiths may see a difference in these digital communities. Lastly, we treasure digital communities because of the relationships mediated digitally, whether it is with members within, with God, or with the global church. These are real and deep relationships that benefit a network society. In a hyper-connected world, we know our digital neighbours better, not merely because of the instant information received online but through the news and updates. In this we can discern how we can help each other to live a flourishing life.

Under these criteria, we can move forward to our collaborative action by the following steps: 

• Identify partners with similar passion and/or skill sets to our ministry. 
• Work together with partners to determine discipleship metrics specifically for our collaboration. 
• Pick two regions with our partners to run pilots of the newly formed mission strategy. 
• Run short-term pilots, measuring hypotheses to test on digital communities vis-a-vis evangelism, discipleship, and fellowship; for example, how we may shift from merely creating content to developing a digital community for the next generation. 
• Assess the pilots to discern if there is any adjustment. 

The collaboration does not have to start from scratch. It can build on existing networks and infrastructure. Some useful resources include Jesus.net, Pray4Tech and Faith Tech.

While the above are practical steps for our collaboration, we understand that our collaborative action should be theologically and missiologically informed, especially in ecclesiology and theological anthropology. This will require researchers, whether from the social scientific, technological, or theological world, to observe patterns in the digital space and refine our current digital theology.

From a missiological perspective, digital evangelism should be people-centred. Although televangelism has been an effective, unidirectional way to spread the gospel in the last century, we foresee that from now to 2050, digital interaction will be the new platform. Due to the overflowing online information, digital evangelism should focus on fostering authentic relationships with those encountered digitally to assist those with information fatigue to prioritise knowledge and relationships that matter. This requires story-telling—talking about God’s story in the gospel as well as our story with God’s presence in our lives.

That said, the group recognised that digital communities are not the only space to evangelise. We must be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and human needs to see what works best for the people we hope to reach. Hybrid engagement is expected in these communities. That is, the group may gather primarily digitally, but they may occasionally meet up physically, or their primary interest is the digital space, but they prioritise in-person meetings.

Communicating a Prayerful Proposal 

It is recognised that partnerships can be formed with experts from other gaps, including Scripture in a Digital Age, Church Forms in a Digital Age, Discipleship in a Digital Age, and Evangelism in a Digital Age. It can be helpful to connect with the Lausanne Movement’s Chief Communications Officer and Indigitious, a network movement that connects people to bring the gospel to the digital space. Our group has also suggested creating an Issue Network group within Lausanne so we can tackle this issue collectively with other gaps.

Outside the Lausanne Movement, we foresee the following actions:

• We will approach government and funding agents for financial resources to refine digital platforms, such as the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Jesus.net. 
• We will need digital experts, AI agents, and technological companies to help us practically create or improve certain apps or online spaces, such as developers in Life.Church and YouVersion. 
• We will be in touch with digital theologians to ensure our practices are theologically grounded. 
• We will also listen to the next generation and digital pastors to discern what works best in our communities.
• Since different geographical regions may have different digital realities and challenges, we must be sensitive to the contexts and adjust our digital strategy accordingly. For example, we may need theological wisdom in countries such as the United States, Germany, and New Zealand, where digital theologies are more advanced than in other countries. 
• We will also be mindful that some countries may not be as digitally connected as in other parts of the world due to expansive internet costs, censorship, and/or regional conflicts (such as Burma, China, Ukraine, and Russia). 
• Lastly, diasporic digital behaviour can be diverse because diasporic groups may have a higher tendency to receive information from their ancestral countries. This should also be considered when we refine our missional strategy online. 

Although the above seems like a long to-do list, we understand that our strength comes from God, who guides us to prioritise our actions and leads us to potential collaborators. We thank God for how far he has led us and trust that he will equip us and our next generation to build better digital communities.

Acknowledgements

I thank Peter Phillips and David Fernández Caballero for the initial discussion about the chapter on the State of Great Commission Report. Also, huge thanks to facilitators Henriette Vinkel and Rebecca Leslie for their commitment to leading the whole-week workshop, as well as affinity hosts Molly Thomas, Karl Udy, Joshua Chew, Mervyn Lee, Kelli Smith, and Joshua Zhong Hao Sng for guiding the discussions.

Author

Calida Chu | Member, Theology Working Group
Dr Calida Chu, born and raised in Hong Kong, is a Teaching Associate in Sociology of Religion at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Nottingham. She is Associate Editor of Practical Theology and is a member of Theology Working Group for the 2024 Lausanne Movement in Seoul, Korea. She may be contacted via: calidachu@alumni.cuhk.net.