A High Ecclesiology In The Digital Age

It’s no secret that the church is experiencing an institutional crisis. Forty million people have left over the last 20 years. Not everyone is leaving for the same reasons, and just because they’re leaving the church behind doesn’t mean they’re leaving God. About 50 percent of people who have “hardly any” trust in organized religion still believe in God “without a doubt.” And while the reasons for leaving the church are wide-ranging, it’d be naive not to look at our digital practices as the church to see in what ways we are contributing to it.

In their book, The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?, Jim Davis and Michael Graham write,

“Most dechurched evangelicals still worship online (which is more common among evangelicals anyway), but they do so at their convenience. Many evangelical churches now call their online worship services ‘on demand,’ and that is exactly what people are choosing to do. What is intended as a new front door is often having the opposite effect by helping the dechurched leave through the back door. Our research showed that physically going to a church in our consumerist digital age has become inconvenient, and many people concluded that they had other priorities for their time and money.”

This doesn’t mean that you should shut down your live stream. That would need to be determined on a church-by-church basis, and there are good reasons to have a live stream. What this does mean is that we need to take a closer examination of our ecclesiology in a digital age. What are we communicating about the church in an age of institutional distrust and digital convenience? Can church really be “on demand”? Or have we lowered our ecclesiology to the lowest possible rung, happy to have views when Jesus called us to make disciples?

The proliferation not just of live streams but of Christian influencers and podcasts makes it easy to consume religious content and get the weekly dose of spirituality one feels one needs without the messy realities of dealing with a community of fellow sinners. Not only do podcasters and creators take the place of pastors in the life of the consumer, but they also fill the role for themselves, as they often forsake meaningful membership in a local church. 

I’ll never forget when I was in college, in the leadership of a new parachurch ministry, and vainly trying to grow my influence on social media. One day, a man I respected texted me and told me he unfollowed me on Instagram. It seems small and silly now, but at the time, it mattered a lot to me that he would choose to unfollow me and reach out to tell me that he’d done so.

When I asked him why, he told me that I talked so much about what the church should and shouldn’t do, but I wasn’t personally attending church myself at the time and hadn’t in any meaningful way in years. Why should he take my thoughts seriously when I had no skin in the game? I wasn’t actually working to make things better. I had no understanding of the inner workings of a church. I had no relationships with congregants or pastors, and I wasn’t accountable to a church myself. I was throwing stones at something that I had no stake in and couldn’t do anything about because I wasn’t actively engaged myself. Why should anyone care what I thought?

It was tough love, but it was exactly what I needed to hear. I took his words to heart, and, that summer, I began my hunt for a church to land in and found one. Unfortunately, in my immaturity, I chose an unhealthy church that would lead to a great deal of hurt down the line. But even through that experience, I would learn significant lessons that have shaped who I am today. For better or for worse, I wouldn’t have learned those lessons if I didn’t have actual skin in the game.

We need to recover a high ecclesiology in our digital age. That doesn’t look like being Luddites and ditching technology altogether. Technology and digital ministry have a proper place in the church to be used effectively to spread the gospel and discipleship of believers. But we need a renewed emphasis on the local church. We are the body of Christ, not the pixels of Christ.

Our digital efforts should reinforce the work of the embodied local church, not replace it. Our digital liturgies should serve our physical liturgies. Our online content should supplement our in-person discipleship. Our presence on social media should be rooted in and submitted to our ecclesial commitments. These things must not be pitted against each other but must be creatively integrated as the physical and digital dimensions of our lives become less distinguishable.

A kite, with no one flying it, blows away in the wind. But when it’s being held on the ground, it can fly as high as the string is long. As members of Christ’s body, we should connect ourselves as members of a local expression of that body. Digital space disconnects us from our bodies, communities, and physical locations, and swirls us about in cyberspace, but the church roots us in reality, grounds us in love, and is ground zero for our life with Christ. Only when we’re firmly planted in a local church can we be free to fly in the winds of cyberspace, knowing that, on the ground of reality, we’re held by the family of God, who will never let us go.