2024 in a Tech-Shaped Culture: 5 New Year's Resolution for The Church

Happy New Year!

As we turn the page to another year, here are five resolutions that I hope the church can keep in the months ahead. Each of these resolutions addresses or aligns with the values that shape our tech-shaped culture (values that I wrote about in "Grace and Gigabytes").

Resolution 1: Preach More Lived Stories and Fewer Theological Abstractions

Secularization has accelerated. Church attendance has plummetted. Belief in the trasncendent, let alone the dogma of organized religion, is constantly contested. In this default context of fragmentation and disbelief, the church cannot afford to preach the language of abstraction.

What is abstraction?

Abstraction is a claim about God that is made without a supporting story, example, or illustration.

In the year ahead, let's resolve to tilt the balance in our preaching towards to the lived stories of God's work in our contexts. Let's resolve to proclaim so many lived stories in our context that we discern a common "watch word," or statement of how God shows up in the particulars of our time and place.

Resolution 2: Enrich In-Person Conversations through Digital Content

As we continue to move beyond the pandemic, live streaming has become less appealing as a regular worship habit. According to Gallup, only 5% of Americans are attending services remotely.

Still, digital ministry will continue to serve as the front door to visitors and guests, necessitating that we continue to offer online worship.

What will happen to digital ministry? We might shift to a content-supported model of digital ministry, in which we create and distribute digital content in service to furthering the dialogues started through our liturgies. We might move from events (streaming worship, for example) to posts and stories that enrich our understanding of a topic and expand our theological imagination. This is the model we've tested at Good Shepherd with "Conversation Sundays" - discussions that start in worship and are furthered through digital content in the week ahead.

Resolution 3: Make Space for AI Experimentation

AI is a once-in-a-generation technological leap. AI will shape our culture, and how our culture makes meaning, in ways that we can only begin to imagine. This new technology will inevitably change not just how we execute tasks but how we process information - how we come to learn something, how we come to believe in something.

It's no exaggeration. AI will change what it means to have faith.

The church cannot sit by idly and observe the AI disruption. We must be active experimenters. From creating digital content based on sermon manuscripts to writing newsletters with chatbots, from using ChatGPT to help us articulate personal faith stories to using text to image generators for our newsletter and website, we must resolve to voraciously experiment with these new tools.

Resolution 4: Teach Tech Sabbath as a Spiritual Practice

Just as AI has the potential to be used for purposeful ministry, it can also create a vicious cycle that further retrenches us in digital isolation. As AI creates better content it will command more of our focus. As it consumes more of our attention, we become more enmeshed in the content of our screens.

Tech Sabbath, whether practiced regularly for an hour or for an entire day of the week, is the defiant claim that these vicious cycles do not have ultimate power over my being. To practice a Tech Sabbath is to remember that we are created for much more than digital consumption.

Resolution 5: Model Gratitude as a Leadership Practice

I recently heard Professor Tom Thibodeau define servant leadership in three parts. Prof. Thibodeau suggested that the first job of a leader is to define reality. The second job of a leader is to say thank you. Everything in between is service.

We live in a world where gratitude is missing - or where it is so shallow and superficial that it loses all meaning. When our technology accelerates our communication, we tend to jettison that which is most essential: expressions of thanks, and articulations of our stories. Each is fundamental to the formation of trust. Yet both become increasingly absent the faster we move.

In the year ahead, let's resolve to model how to set aside the drive towards productivity to give meaningful thanks for the service we receive, and to give thanks for those who serve at our side.

In all contexts, in any forums, we are called to partake in the spiritual practice of gratitude in ways that are deep, meaningful, and enriching.

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@ryanpanzer would like to wish everyone a Blessed 2024!

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What good is digital ministry if nobody shows up for the livestream?

The trajectory of digital ministry has looked something like this:

According to Google Trends, a handy barometer of cultural trends, there was a meteoric increase in church online searches during the early stages of the pandemic.

Then there was a similarly steep drop-off in searches for church online.

And today, there's almost as much interest in church online as there was before Covid-19 - which is to say, not much interest at all.

If online search data is a leading indicator of cultural trends, online church attendance is a lagging indicator. Some congregations continued to see strong online attendance and participation throughout 2021 and into 2022 as the Delta and Omicron variants spread. It was only in the second half of 2022 that online church viewership for these parishes moved from stable to shrinking.

One of the churches whose churches I occasionally watch saw their online participation drop from hundreds each week (in 2021) to dozens (in early 2022) to low single digits (late 2022).

And as congregations struggled to staff digital production roles for livestreams viewed by few if any people, a question emerged. What good is digital ministry if nobody shows up for the livestream?

In the "Holy and the Hybrid," I argue that hybrid ministry is less about livestreams than it is about inclusion. Combining the online with the offline is not the point. Instead, the goal of hybrid ministry is extending a wide-reaching invitation to life in a Christian community while forming individuals for lives of discipleship and service. We do effective hybrid ministry not when we livestream everything, but when we discern the ideal methods for inviting and equipping using the digital and personal tools available to our community.

If we understand digital ministry in this way, then our attendance metrics are irrelevant. The question we should ask ourselves is not whether we should cancel the livestream moving forward. Instead, the question is how we should best utilize digital tools to be inviting and inclusive.

This might mean pivoting away from streamed services and moving towards more content creation and curation. It might involve developing a set of KPIs that is less focused on viewership and more focused on hospitality.

2022 Barna Group data indicates that Millennials, and particularly non-white Millennials, are more involved with church communities than they were in 2019. 22% of Millennials have even started attending multiple churches, in a pattern of digital church-hopping. As congregations become more fluent in digital content and online forms of hospitality, people are becoming more connected to the church, and to the Gospel message.

And so, as we start a new year of digital ministry, perhaps it is time to discard the 3-year-old playbooks we started to write in March 2020. Maybe it is time to focus less on how many are watching, and focus more on digital ministry practices that are consistently available, original, and hospitable.

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Join Faith+Lead and I for a morning of digital learning focused on online visibility! Registration is now open for this January 26th, 2023 workshop!

Book Announcement: The Holy and the Hybrid

And just as everyone predicted, the pandemic arrived at an abrupt conclusion! Everyone returned to worship in person, and the church quickly returned to what it was on March 1st, 2020!...

...This is what I would have written, had my predictions from the early days of the pandemic materialized. As we now know all too well, the disruptions of 2020 persist. As cases of the virus ebb and flow, economic uncertainty takes hold. And as individuals and families return to their normal weekly schedules, church attendance is no longer routine. By some estimates, at least 1 in 4 active church-goers are still missing from the pews.

The church continues to navigate uncharted territory as it emerges from a pandemic, addresses economic turmoil, and seeks to make sense of its new normal. Today's church leader faces innumerable questions and challenges. The location of Christian community is among the most perplexing of these concerns.

Should we, as church leaders, continue to offer online worship? Or does online worship incentivize members to avoid their communities, passively consuming church from the comfort of home? Should we continue to invite members to Zoom into gatherings? Or does digital access diminish the quality of the gathering for all involved? Should we encourage our communities to return to the localized experience of church we knew before the pandemic? Or should we seek to discern what it actually means to be a "hybrid" church?

These are the questions I couldn't stop thinking about when I began work on my latest book. Written for church leaders, staff, board and council members, and church attendees everywhere who are short on time and energy, it is a book about sustainable and purposeful ministry in our new normal.

In "The Holy and the Hybrid," I present hybrid ministry as a practice of utilizing digital spaces to extend an invitation to Christian community, and utilizing analog gatherings to equip communities for discipleship and service. Far from a summons to be "always-on," this model of hybrid ministry is rooted in purpose and a commitment to community.

Based on countless conversations with church leaders, researchers, and digital ministry experts, the book traces the evolution of hybrid ministry from the first days of the pandemic. I contrast the three models of church we have collectively experienced since March 2020: entirely analog, entirely virtual, and a hybrid of online and offline. I explore the strengths of each model, providing specific ideas and change management practices that will resonate with the post-pandemic church.

Available now for pre-order, "The Holy and the Hybrid" arrives wherever books are sold this September!

Praise for The Holy and the Hybrid

“Two decades and one pandemic into a religious reality dramatically changed by digital technologies, social media, and the new modes of communications they have prompted, Ryan Panzer’s The Holy and the Hybrid advances an essential conversation for church leaders and communities responding to the ministry needs of the digitally integrated world. An important exploration not only of communication practices required for meaningful ministry engagement today, but also a guide to innovative structural changes that will encourage and support revitalized ministries, The Holy and the Hybrid should be on every pastor’s, priest’s, and lay minister’s digital or old-school wooden desktop.”

—Dr. Elizabeth Drescher, adjunct associate professor of religious studies, Santa Clara University; author of Choosing Our Religion: The Spiritual Lives of America’s Nones

“The coronavirus pandemic required us all to examine our way of life. What was essential? What could be modified? While we all scrambled with that in some way, churches and ministry organizations had the challenge of sharing the gospel and cultivating faithful community when most of the traditional communal practices of church were considered unsafe. In The Holy and the Hybrid, Ryan Panzer analyzes the emotions that came with the pandemic but also helps us learn and grow from the ways in which we had to adjust. Covid-19 forced us to examine the ‘that's the way we've always done it’ mentality in our churches and to look at how technology and digital practices can help our churches in their mission of sharing the gospel and cultivating faithful community. This book is not a ‘how to do’ but a ‘how to think about’ our ministry, allowing the logistics of tech-enhanced ministry to meet the culture and context of each congregation. The Holy and the Hybrid is a roadmap, or perhaps a GPS, pointing us to where the church can go in this next era of our ministry lives together.”

—Ross Murray, deacon, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; vice president, GLAAD Media Institute; founding director, The Naming Project; producer, Yass, Jesus! Podcast; and author of Made, Known, Loved: Developing LGBTQ-Inclusive Youth Ministry

“In this timely book, Panzer skillfully identifies and interprets the moment we are in. With one foot in the church and one in the tech industry, he speaks with a hybridized authority that few of us can muster. The Holy and the Hybrid offers a feast of insights that will be beneficial to a wide range of church leaders navigating monumental cultural changes.”

—Michael J. Chan, executive director for Faith and Learning, Concordia College, Moorhead, MN

“Part memoir, part manual, this readable book will help readers make sense of their own journeys into hybrid ministry—the places where the physical and the digital offer both old and new ways of doing ministry. Panzer is both committed to digital ministry and aware of its limits, which makes this book an honest and helpful guide for readers reflecting on how God is calling them to design the next chapter of ministry in their own settings.”

—Dave Daubert, pastor, Zion Lutheran Church, Elgin, IL; lead consultant, Day 8 Strategies; and author of Becoming a Hybrid Church