The Advantage of Low-Tech Churches as Buildings Reopen

Blessed are the Low-Tech, when it comes to hybrid ministry. For theirs is the opportunity to be truly collaborative.

It's an exciting moment. With vaccinations now available to all American adults, it seems as though our "new normal" is closer than we may have anticipated. Churches continue to reopen their doors and create plans for hybrid ministry, a way of being church that blends the connections of the digital world with the strong community of the in-person church.

At this moment, there's a widespread perception that large, high-tech congregations with healthy media budgets are at an advantage. It seems logical that building a bridge between the online and the offline requires a skilled media production with access to Hollywood-quality studio equipment. After all, high-tech churches are the congregations that can create the "best" viewing experience: clear audio, crisp video, snappy transitions. Moreover, these congregations won't require pastors to be both preacher and video director at the same moment. Freed from multi-tasking, we imagine these leaders to be in a more advantageous position.

But if we take a critical look at why we are called to hybrid ministry, we might discover the opposite.

Hybrid ministry isn't the process of using digital technology for it's own sake. Instead, it's a calling to find a way of being church that is more inclusive and accessible. It's a summons to be more intentionally communal.

For these reasons, high-tech churches are actually at a disadvantage.

They might have the resources to create a polished and professional streaming "product," compelling enough to rival most viewing options on Netflix or HBO MAX. Indeed, who wouldn't want to watch a video with the production quality of a Joel Osteen?

Yet here's the paradox. The more polished our church services become, the more "professionalized" they are likely to be. In that sense, high-tech expressions of church are not particularly inclusive. Rather than creating a collaborative experience of Christian community, they create another piece of content for the consumption of the masses. Rather than extending an invitation into the shared work of the people, they create an unintentional buffer - between those sitting in the pews - and those watching from their couches.

For three reasons, low-tech churches, or those without vast media budgets and dedicated production staff, are at an advantage in the hybrid church.

First, low-tech churches are more likely to use Zoom as a platform for online worship. YouTube and Facebook Live may be the most common platforms for worship, but they tend to require event software integrations like OBS. A more ubiquitous tool that requires no additional software, Zoom just requires a device with a camera (an iPhone suffices) and audio input (a simple USB microphone is sufficient). Zoom creates a bridge between online and offline because it welcomes multiple voices. It's the only tool where that natively supports virtual worship leadership, that comes with the built-in ability to welcome digital lectors, prayers, cantors, and preachers. It's also the only tool where one can see the faces of all who gather online!

Low-tech churches will also have less tech equipment. Less equipment means more flexibility in configuring a worship space. A tripod-mounted iPad takes up less space than a studio soundboard with a full HD camcorder. This makes it possible to "record" the service from the front row or the middle of the sanctuary, whereas high-tech churches tend to record from the far back. Lower-tech churches thus provide a front row seat to worship, while high-budget congregations provide a seat in the back row, looking in.

Finally, lower-tech churches are more likely to rely on one of the key "low-tech" fundamentals of hybrid ministry: using inclusive language. Without professional video, they'll be more likely to greet online viewers. They'll be more likely to include their concerns in the prayers of the people, to speak directly to the online experience as part of the announcements. When it comes to creating an inclusive experience of those gathered online and offline, our words matter far more than what's on our screens. Low-tech ministries will be that much more likely to pay attention to this key aspect of inclusivity.

In recent conversations, I've heard some of those who lead small, rural and low-tech churches express a certain amount of resignation. It seems, in some cases, that they have already given up on hybrid ministry in their context.

Here's hoping they will find the strength and energy to attempt it. Here's praying that they won't squander their innate advantage.

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@ryanpanzer is the author of "Grace and Gigabytes"

Time for a change: Talking to your church about hybrid ministry

As church leaders, lay and ordained, staff and non-staff, we tend to see the value in remaining online in some form after buildings can safely and completely reopen. We've noticed the increased worship attendance that accompanies live-streamed services. We've heard from parishioners who moved away years ago but who have rejoined our faith communities virtually over the last year. And we've talked with friends who never go to church, but have tuned into our YouTube worship service for a few moments, or caught glimpses of a recent sermons on Facebook Live.

As leaders, we get it. The web is a mission field.

And with brand-new Gallup data showing that the majority of Americans are no longer members of a church, the importance of the web to the sustainability of our ministry cannot be overstated.

It's a different story in our broader church communities.

If our buildings haven't already reopened, they will soon, and we'll quickly hear from those who were burnt out of Zoom, those who were so ready to be back, who have no interest in ever again connecting with their church community online. They want to be "back," they want a return to "normal."

This creates an inevitable leadership tangle: the desire to be accessible, inclusive, and invitational in digital spaces, versus the reality of members who are burnt out on digital connection.

Getting started with hybrid ministry: A bit like climbing into a hang glider. On a cliff. Next to the ocean.

This tension isn't going to resolve itself, and it's not going to disappear anytime soon. Some will see the missional opportunity of further ministry work in digital spaces, but many will not. So before we get back into the rhythm of our analog church communities, before our time, energy, and resources are taken up by the realities of face-to-face gatherings, let's take a minute to talk with our congregations about hybrid ministry.

For starters, let's share the message widely that in the transition to safely reopning our buildings, we'll continue to prioritize digital accessibility. Not everyone is comfortable returning at the exact time, and with herd immunity still months away, there's no magic date on the calendar where we can snap back to the church we were. We'll continue to have cameras in the sanctuary and Zoom dial-ins for meetups because nobody should have to trade their comfort and safety for the right to participate in our community. As we journey towards the other side of this pandemic, let's communicate that we are making digital a highly visible and widespread priority.

By communicating that we are staying connected online during this time of transition, we set the foundation for the future of hybrid ministry: that our commitment to inclusivity is only as great as our commitment to ministry in digital spaces.

Not everyone is comfortable attending an analog church. Not everyone is available to be present in a building at a specific time. And while those of us who are temporarily-able-bodied may not experience any issues with walking into a church, let's remember that steps, sidewalks, and stained glass create physical barriers to some, spiritual and emotional barriers to others.

Some will push back. The conversation on inclusivity in the near-term and long-term won't be enough, and they won't care much about the opportunity to extend the reach of the church.

You can probably already guess who that will be within your community. They'll say things like "it's fine to be online, but I don't want to see cameras in the sanctuary. I don't want to have to join any Zoom calls. This is my church, and I want it to go back to normal. Is this really where we are going to spend our money?"

We need to talk to these individuals, and listen to their concerns. These ideas likely don't come from an opposition to hybrid ministry - but from frustration with a year of widespread sacrifice and ever-present social distancing.

Perhaps the best way to talk with and listen to these individuals is not to ask for their opinions on the use of technology in the church. We don't need to give them access to a physical suggestions box, because we don't need to give them an outlet for their complaints.

What we should do instead is to ask them to think about the future of the church. We might ask them to think about what it means that 50% of all Amercians are no longer church members, that entire Christian denominations may disappear within our lifetime.

Then, we should ask them to think about who we are called to be, and what God is calling us to do. In other words, we should ask them to reflect on our church's mission.

If we get too technical with these conversations, if we get stuck on "what we do" instead of "why we do it," we are unlikely to get anywhere. But if we invite our communities to reflect on the future of our ministry, and how we can sustain our shared sense of connection and service for another generation, we may find that we're all more willing to change than we might like to admit.

We don't need to persuade everyone, we may not need to persuade anyone. We simply need to show up for the conversation, to share that hybrid ministry matters, to facilitate a dialogue on where God is calling us next.

Because this isn't a conversation about cameras, social media, or computers. This is a conversation about our future, about whether all that is great about our church community will be available to a new generation.

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@ryanpanzer is the author of "Grace and Gigabytes."

Future of Church: Measuring the "Effectiveness" of a Hybrid Ministry

Your church's top two success measures likely involve attendees and donations, or, to be a bit crass, "butts and bucks."

Don't believe me? Check out your congregation's annual report. Notice the data on attendance/membership. Notice the data on giving. See any other graphs? See any other numbers? Most likely, you do not.

Finances and attendance have long been the indicators of an "effective" ministry because they provide a proxy for "growth." If both numbers are going up and to the right, we have a growing ministry, and by the standards of the capitalist West, that's a good thing, right?

There's only one problem: donations are down. Attendance is down. Giving will continue to dwindle (thanks in part to the Trump tax law), membership will continue to fall. Sure, some churches will manage to be a temporary outlier. They'll find a way to increase their attendance, and drive up their giving - but this will come at the expense of other neighborhood churches. As Nona Jones tells us in her book on social media ministry, their success will be the demise of other congregations in their hometown.

If you're a member of the clergy, do yourself and your church leadership a favor: divest yourself of these success measures. They'll only wear you down, they'll only demoralize your community. These are the success measures of the "Christendom" church, when our surrounding culture created Christians for us, when the American way meant attendance in a building at a set time each and every week. These measures cannot guide us into the church's future. But what can?

If the future of church is to be a strategic blend of the online and the offline, with the objectives of collaborative service and faith formation, then attendance and giving are relatively meaningless. They can help to plan a budget document, but aren't much good beyond that. After all, how can you extrapolate an intent to live a life of faithful service from a stack of dollar bills? How can you find a commitment to missional collaboration by tracking the quantity butts on a bench?

It's clear that the future of church needs a replacement set of "success" indicators, "KPIs," or measurement tactics. For those who are curious what could replace revenue and retention, I would offer the following suggestion: the future of the church is about extending an invitation, then equipping for service. The future of the church is about creating a culture of collaboration so that all can participate in God's global mission. To that end, we have to arrive at a set of measures that somehow quantify inviting, equipping, and collaborating.

In a digital age church, inviting, equipping, and collaborating happen in a hybrid of the virtual and the face-to-face, through a blurring of distinctions between the online and the offline. To measure the effectiveness of the hybrid church, then, we must start by understanding the extent to which the online and the offline can be integrated in the life of a faith community. There are three concepts that allow us to do just that: coverage, quality, and connection.

Coverage measures the breadth of digital integration within a church community. For every act of service, for every act of worship, and for every conversation, there needs to be a digital invitation. Coverage, then, is measured by the percentage of church happenings that could be simultaneously accessed both online and offline. Was a worship service livestreamed? Then it met the requirement for coverage. Did a board meeting have a Zoom link? Then it has coverage. Coverage happens when we make an intentional effort to invite collaboration, especially collaboration that takes place through a screen.

Quality analyzes the depth of digital integration. For every opportunity to connect digitally, we need to understand whether the connection was seamless and easy. Quality is a subjective measure of integration, displayed on a sliding scale of low to high-quality experiences. If a worship service was livestreamed, but the camera was at the back of the sanctuary and the audio was patchy, the quality was low. If a Bible Study provided a conference call dial-in, and used a Jabra or USB microphone to improve the audio quality for those joining remotely, the quality was high. Quality happens when we focus on hospitality, on treating those who join our life together through technology as equal collaborators in the mission we share.

Finally, connection looks at the degree to which technology was actually used. Connection is a quantitative measure that resembles but is not synonymous with attendance. For every piece of blog content we created in support of a sermon series, how many read it? For every sermon we posted to Wistia, how many watched? Connection-based metrics, which look at raw engagement metrics, are still useful in the hybrid church, because they can tell us where our digital invitations are going unseen. If we find that our digital presence is going unnoticed, we might find that we have some further work to do in defining who we are called to be, and what we are called to do, in this digital age.

These three concepts have at their core three questions. In everything we do as church:

• Did we make digital collaboration possible?

• Did we do everything to make digital collaboration a high-quality experience?

• And did anyone actually participate digitally?

We can learn a great deal from these questions. They can help us to live into our new normal, to reimagine Christian community in a digital age. But they can't help us if we continue to ask the old questions. They can't help us if they go unasked.

Hybrid ministry in an eventual new normal will be quite different from the church we experienced in February 2020. Accordingly, we need to measure "effectiveness" differently. In doing so, we might just find that what we're after as church has nothing do with "effectiveness," and everything to do with service: collaborative, inclusive service, open to all, in response to God's eternal call.

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@ryanpanzer is the author of "Grace and Gigabytes."