Digital Ministry vs. Hybrid Ministry: What's the Difference?

Let's talk terminology.

In church leadership circles, we hear the words "digital" and "hybrid" with increasing frequency.

Often, they are used interchangeably. Occasionally, they are used in conjunction: "our digital-hybrid ministry offers..." As with any ministry model, there will be some ambiguity and overlap in their definitions.

But digital is not synonymous with hybrid. These are qualitatively different models, with vastly different implications for a congregation's resources, staffing, and ministry philosophy.

Prior to the pandemic, as many as 50% of congregations were analog churches. Without a website or presence on social media, they lacked the capacity, let alone the motivation, to collaborate with online communities for the sake of mission.

But many churches with some digital presence were actually analog. Their websites and digital content existed for one purpose: to bring people somewhere else. In this way, the websites of the analog church functioned as high-end billboards, directing users to buildings for synchronous gatherings, such as worship and Christian education. A church does not become a digital ministry simply by having a website or social media. It becomes a digital ministry by gathering around the Word of God in digital spaces.

Digital ministry, then, is about access to the grace of God, as experienced through digital forms of community. When we think about digital ministry, we tend to think of worship. Digital worship was the model that 96% of pastors implemented during the pandemic, particularly during the lockdowns of spring and summer 2020, a time when there were few viable alternative models.

Live-streamed worship services are frequently associated with the digital church, however, utilizing live streaming is not a mandatory component of a digital ministry. Engaging in book discussions through Zoom, conducting board meetings via teleconferencing, and fostering social media conversations around content are also ways to practice digital ministry. As churches reassess their reliance on live-streaming, they might discover that concentrating on content - or digital resources that educate, empower, and motivate their faith communities - is a more sustainable approach.

Digital ministry, then, exists whenever web-based tools are used to gather the faithful around the Gospel message.

Some assume that ongoing live streaming also represents hybrid ministry. If a congregation gathers in the pews and on Zoom, for example, then it must be hybrid.

It's not quite that simple.

Hybrid ministry exists wherever bridges are built between online and in-person participants. To be a hybrid ministry is to create opportunities for collaboration, online and offline. A ministry can only be hybrid when online participants are actively involved in the work of the people.

Sitting passively in one's living room while watching a YouTube stream is not hybrid worship. Listening in on a Zoom conversation is not hybrid church leadership. Recording a Confirmation podcast is not hybrid Christian education.

To practice hybrid ministry is to create opportunities for those online to collaborate with, and even to lead, those gathered face-to-face. Hybrid ministry demands a high level of creativity and strategic allocation of resources. For instance, a hybrid worship ministry may rely on platforms like Zoom for services, as it allows for active participation and collaboration. Moreover, a successful hybrid ministry requires designated individuals (preferably not the pastor) to foster online discussions, manage prayer requests, and moderate interactions in the chat.

Not all ministries have to be digital, and not every digital ministry has to be hybrid. Likewise, a congregation does not necessarily need to integrate digital or hybrid approaches into every aspect of its community activities. It is common for churches to utilize digital methods for worship, hybrid approaches for adult faith formation, and stick to traditional analog methods for music ministry. There will always be a place for both digital and analog ministries within the church.

But the congregations that succeed in implementing hybrid ministry, whether through worship or some other expression of communal life, will discover what digital and analog churches may not recognize: that the grace of God abounds, that the Spirit is truly present wherever we are located, each and every moment of the day.

How to convince your council to invest in digital ministry

"How exactly will this grow our church?"

When church councils evaluate spending and investments, this is among the most frequently asked questions. Trained in a culture where growth is synonymous with effectiveness, today's council members often want to see the straight line from budget items to more members. This mindset aligns with the widespread equation for church growth that Andy Root critiques in The Congregation in a Secular Age:

Members + Programs = More Members.

According to this pervasive logic, the programs within a church exist to prime, or to increase the number of members. Digital ministry is, by extension, one such program, the objective of which is to continuously accelerate church growth.

As our buildings continue to reopen, council members will evaluate digital or hybrid ministry with this same framework. How will spending on apps like Zoom, Slack, and Vimeo bring more people to our congregation? How will investment in technologies like video conference rooms, PTZ cameras, and shotgun microphones increase our membership rolls?

Today's church leader could follow this line of questioning to build a case for digital ministry investment. There is data, after all, indicating that 50% of churches saw an increase in attendance during Spring 2020, a season when most congregations were testing online worship for the first time. And while online worship attendance has dipped since its pandemic peak, many congregations continue to see video views that outnumber pre-pandemic worship attendance.

But maybe focusing on church growth isn't the best way to convince your council to invest in digital ministry.

What if digital ministry is not about growth, but is instead about faithfulness?

What if hybrid ministry, which integrates the online with the offline, is less about increasing our numbers and more about sharing our faith stories?

Digital ministry connects with those who are physically, mentally, or spiritually unable to attend in-person worship or face-to-face faith formation, and countless congregations have stories of how they have reignited relationships with former members who moved away. Church leaders have stories of how they have provided pastoral care and spiritual counseling to congregants who continue to feel anxious and isolated. They have experiences of how a conversation, or a blog post, or a podcast has resonated with an unchurched Milllennial, one who still doesn't plan to attend worship, but appreciated the grace inherent in the message. They can tell you about how they became reacquainted with someone who was an active youth group member before leaving the church for several decades, or how they started conversations with nursing home residents who for years had felt isolated from their church community.

These are the stories that reveal the importance of digital ministry, and these are the stories that today's church leader needs to bring to the council. These are the perspectives that the treasurer needs to hear before finalizing the budget and signing the checks.

According to Pew Research, 28% of Americans (and 21% of mainline Protestants) have felt their faith strengthened as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. While it's difficult to isolate a causal factor in this data, the combination of global crisis plus the ease of accessing church content and community undoubtedly contribute to these trends.

Nobody knows how the pandemic will end. Nobody knows when the pews will fill up to their pre-pandemic levels, or whether online worship participation will remain a fixture in the congregation's life.

All we have for certain are the stories: the lived experiences of those who encountered the grace of God while navigating a time of global crisis.

How do you convince your church council to pay $30,000 to boost your WiFi speeds or $5,000 to set up a video-equipped classroom? You share how these investments have connected the community to a God who tends to show up, not just in our building, but wherever we are gathered. You tell a story of a God who is faithful in both sacred space and cyberspace.

When we stop seeking the connection between programs and members, between technology and growth, the digital church becomes more than an investment. It becomes a community.

The emerging spiritual crisis: What is church even for anymore?

Has digital ministry generated an unintended spiritual crisis?

With a few taps of a button, I can watch the worship live stream of seemingly any church in the world. I can download podcasts featuring the most thoughtful and articulate theologians of our time. I can watch shows and series that prompt me to contemplate life's biggest questions. I can even chat or Zoom with a coach, mentor, or spiritual director who can help me to engage the questions unique to my faith journey.

As the life of faith becomes more accessible through digital media, some will inevitably ask the question: what is church even for anymore?

If I can derive the benefits of Chrisitan community with the convenience of apps, video, and podcasts, why bother committing to a church? If I can learn to live a full Christian life from influencers on my social media feed, why deal with the encumberments of membership? If I can read and explore the scriptures through a screen, why travel somewhere else to listen to a preacher? Why not just go it alone?

Searching for God with Google: Searches for the question "What is the Bible" have more than quadrupled since 2004.

These are difficult, if not impossible questions, for today's faith leader to address. So perhaps the best way for churches to address such a question is to avoid arriving at this point at all.

How, exactly, do we do that?

For starters, imagine that our churches, regardless of denomination or tradition, were divided into two broad categories: prescribing churches, and discerning churches.

A prescribing church is concerned with pre-empting real and relevant situations. Often drawing upon the scriptures, but at times integrating tradition, theology, and reason, a prescribing church concerns itself with proclaiming what the faithful ought to do under highly specific conditions. A prescribing church has detailed, yet sometimes nuanced, perspectives on a catalog of cultural questions and challenges: how do I lead my business? How do I act as a Christian father? What should I donate to the church each month? While a prescribing church is attuned to contemporary realities, its focus is on preparation: equipping members with a clear Christian playbook.

A discerning church is concerned with contemplation and action amidst present-day reality. Integrating spiritual practices of prayer and meditation along with the scriptures, tradition, and theology, a discerning church learns to consistently ask key questions. What is God up to in our world? And how are we called to be a part of God's work? A discerning church is Spirit-led and situationally aware. When encountering a new situation or challenge, the discerning church delves into its practices to interpret how to be the hands and feet of God in the world. A discerning church is thus concerned with habit and practice: equipping members with a versatile toolkit, but not necessarily a blueprint or instructional manual.

Searching apart from the church: The steady decline of church-related Google searches, 2004-present.

Prescribing and discerning churches exist in all denominations and across the ideological spectrum. It's just as likely to be a discerning conservative evangelical church as it is to be a prescribing liberal mainline congregation. And both approaches to Christian community are faithful responses to the Great Comission. It is possible to make disciples with playbooks just as it is possible to be the hands and feet of Christ with tool kits.

The advantage of the discerning church, then, is that it is less easily replaced by digital media. The teachings of the prescribing church are easily outsourced to savvy media developers. But there's no "3 Steps to Faithful Living" blog post that can substitute for a discerning spiritual community. There's no online course that can provide the sense of communal grounding in which practices are explored.

The advantage of the discerning church is that it provides a space for grappling with questions that defy easy answers. It provides practices in which we can hear God speaking a word of grace into our world. And in an age of Instagram Influencers and self-aggrandizing social media, the discerning church provides a community through which we can differentiate God's call from our own ego and self-interest.

What is church even for anymore? It's not a place to learn exactly how to live in highly specific situations. It's not a place we go to get the Biblical answer or the Christian perspective. Your podcast feed can provide that for you, without taking away your Sunday morning.

Rather, church is a place to discern what your Christian identity means in an ever-changing world. It is a place to hear the voice of God - a voice that comes to us not as an answer, but as a question, not as a lecture, but as an invitation. In a world of ceaseless change, it is time for church leaders to stop prescribing. It is time instead to initiate a communal journey of discernment.