Good Reader,
This issue is peak Good Words: there’s faith, tech, and more than a little thinking about how to be in 20xx.
If you’re a church-goer, you’ve experienced your share of virtual worship services by now. Even as many restart in-person gatherings, there’s every indication that some form of digital delivery will persist. For now, it serves to accommodate those who are sick, self-isolating, or taking extra precautions. But beyond COVID considerations and public health guidelines, virtual worship services are likely here to stay.
The pandemic has accelerated an existing trend of making elements of the church available online. Most common are podcasts of sermon audio and video recordings, made available following the worship service, because of their relatively low technical barriers. However, the scramble to reach parishioners during lockdowns in March means that many churches with little to no online presence are now able to continue offering virtual versions of their worship services.
Should they? And, if so, how should digital church be delivered? I have no idea! But I am going to think about it, and I invite you to join me.
-Matt
A special welcome to all the new subscribers who have recently discovered this newsletter! Good Words is free but operates on a patronage model. Become a paying subscriber to support this project and my other work.
First, I’ll say that I believe there are good reasons to offer church teaching via the internet and the digital media so many use every day. The best reason is the desire to reach people with the good news of the gospel. Yet, just because the desire is good doesn’t necessarily mean it can be pursued in salutary ways.
If you’ve read much of my writing on technology, then you know I’ve adopted a reasonably critical attitude in the last five years. Still, I see myself as what Neil Postman called a “loving resistance fighter.” I believe Facebook is a blight, but I don’t think that something like Facebook could never be good if implemented and deployed for the express benefit of people. Our digital tools can be better, but that will only happen if we understand how the current tools work, why they work that way, and the principles by which they’re designed.
To help us along, I’ve assigned some reading.
📜👩💻 Ten Theses on Digitally Mediated Worship – Micah Latimer-Dennis, Breaking Ground
This piece makes ten statements about worship and technopoly that prompt the questions Christians should be asking themselves about virtual worship. I’d call it essential reading for pastors and lay leaders, even though it doesn’t answer a single question. Too often, we make decisions based on pressing needs and then never revisit them; this is a subject worth revisiting.
We’re not done thinking about church in a digitally mediated world. In this spirit, I want to do some thinking in public by addressing the proposed theses from the linked article above.
As always, you can join the conversation by replying to this email or starting a discussion using the button below.
Part 1
Christian worship is an act of attention the church makes to the Lord.
Digital media are constructed to divide and direct the attention of users for the profit of owners.
To use digital tools for worship requires using them against their default settings.
Christian worship is more than an act of attention, but it most certainly is an act of attention. Sitting in a pew on Sunday, however, doesn’t guarantee an authentic experience of worship. I could spend my time in gathered worship anxiously answering work emails or critiquing everything from the volume of the music to the pastor’s wardrobe and the choice of benediction.
Even though I wouldn’t be attending to the Lord in these instances, my presence at the gathering—in the presence of other believers—might allow for serendipity. My anxiety (or critical brow crinkle) might invite the attention of a concerned congregant after the service. Equally serendipitously, a stray line from a hymn or a cutting word of Scripture might refocus my attention from the world inside my head to the God in whom I live and move and have my being.
If you’re the inductive bible study type, then that last line should stand out as Saint Paul quoting Greek philosopher Epimenides to an audience in Acts 17. It’s a fun bit of bible trivia, but it’s also instructive. Christians ought to think critically and deeply about the wider culture, a culture we share but do not ultimately serve. If Saint Paul could accurately quote a philosopher from Crete to make a point about God intelligible to a doubtful audience, church leaders should at least aspire to explain how a smartphone in every pocket changes our experience of reality.
So, where physical presence in worship can make certain demands of me even as my smartphone waits in my pocket, virtual worship complicates things. When worship is mediated digitally, the context of worship becomes such that distraction becomes the rule. Theses 2 & 3 above complicate the pragmatic move churches made towards the ubiquitous and free platforms offered by Big Tech during the lockdown, a move that makes sense for the same reason it’s dangerous: Our collective attention is already being effectively captured and directed by digital media. Churches simply see themselves as meeting people where they are.
But this point demands its own kind of attention. If the widely used digital tools available to churches are, in fact, predatory and detrimental to users, should we use them for worship? Can we use them effectively to reach a searching and lonely world?
I believe we can use digital media, not as a replacement that’s ‘better than,’ but as a stop-gap that doesn’t hide its second-best status. Still, this can be done well, or it can be done poorly. Navigating the rocks capable of shipwrecking churches’ good intentions will require close scrutiny of the tools available to us, and perhaps ultimately opting for solutions that are not as quick, convenient, or as cheap as the obvious choices.
If we’re going to use digital tools “against their default settings,” then churches need to understand what the defaults are, and the risks involved.
In Part 2, I’ll explore some of the less obvious alternatives, but let’s end with a question that might crowdsource some helpful ideas:
What are some creative solutions to the lack of presence in digitally mediated worship? These needn’t be high-tech solutions, but they should privilege interaction and attention.
Gardeners’ World and the Object of Attention
Some personal publishing news: The host of BBC’s Gardeners’ World shared my latest piece on Twitter and I’ve decided that the retweet was, in fact, an endorsement! It’s equal parts an ode to gardening and critique of digital distraction.
Thanks for reading this issue of Good Words. Enjoy this photo of Montreal, QC.
📷 Ave. Rachel - Canon AE-1, 50mm, Fujicolor 400.