Good reader,
Opportunity cost is investment-speak for the money you could’ve made but didn’t. It’s the difference in value between a chosen option and an unchosen one, and generally, it doesn’t do to dwell on foregone value (unless you’re a professional money-maker). For my purpose here, opportunity costs are the price we stand to pay after these virus lockdowns lift.
There are going to be important collective and individual choices to make when we hit Play on the world again and return to all kinds of work, play, and even prayer. What will churches look like coming out of this? Despite my fears of doubling down on the virtual, there are reasons to hope. Let’s look at the faith angle today.
Reorient
A recent Twitter thread from James K.A. Smith got me thinking about leaning on virtual meetings may actually move churches towards better practices of community. It’s worth reading the whole thread, but here’s his conclusion:
Smith frames the situation like this: The rapid move to online church should encourage increasing disembodiment and the worst trends of consumer approaches toward the church. Instead, there are signs the opposite is happening. “Remote worship is revivifying the parish"
The danger Smith cites is an obvious one. As churches move online, the local, physical church becomes less critical because now everyone has the freedom to choose the best product. This isn’t happening, at least anecdotally, but why? Why listen to your uncool pastor through a tinny mic and bad video on YouTube when you can listen to a celebrity preacher with more degrees and professional production?
Because one is your pastor, and the other isn’t. Also, you can probably knock on your pastor’s door. The parish, which has declined in importance as suburbs and larger congregations have encouraged “commuter churches,” is becoming more critical.
Recalibrate
Smith cites the creative, committed experiments in digital gathering as evidence of churches valuing their local, incarnate communities.
My own church, like many, is using videoconferencing to hold prayer meetings and weekly small-groups on top of streaming Sunday worship services. Our elders have decided to hold off on taking communion virtually, though. Instead, they hope the time apart will serve to deepen our desire to draw near to each other and Christ when we can finally gather fully and bodily. We’re also enjoying the insight of more members of the congregation than usual. Daily reflections on the Psalms from the pastoral team, but also lay-leaders, are recorded and distributed online, reminding us our churches depend on the pews as much as the pulpit.
There is a danger that all of this just becomes “content” to consume— more grist for the digital mill. That’s the opportunity cost: if these creative adaptations become just another way to consume church, with less friction and little commitment, our churches will pay a heavy price.
But if this time of testing (and trial and error) can reveal new ways to care and be in a community, and not just increase comfort, convenience, and choice, then the profitable potential comes into focus. We have an opportunity to come out of isolation healthier and more alive than when we shut the church doors.
Return
There is a legitimate fear that the sudden shift to virtual gathering could be a death sentence to some churches, especially smaller ones. As choices increase, our bias toward consumerism can lead to seeking the best available content rather than the community nearest us. But Smith’s observations are a reminder that what’s happening with this turn to streaming church isn’t like the télé-evangelism of the 80s and 90s. For one, the smaller churches tend to be more local; they are parishes. The parish serves a particular locality and not an abstraction. In small churches, congregants are much more likely to be actual neighbours, and social isolation only boosts the value of locality.
If social distancing measures are going to be with us at varying intensities for quite some time, then the local parish may grow in importance because of its limitations. As I and others have said before, this pandemic will show the cracks in the digital kingdoms we inhabit. So while some people may be unmoored from the local churches and drift towards rootless, digital-only faith communities, it seems more likely that things will play out in the ways Smith has taken note of in the thread above.
It may feel like things are crashing down around us, but I think parishioners, as well as pastors, can take heart. The pandemic is exposing our need for one another and our shared need for each other—close, accessible, and tangible—in a way no sermon or vision statement possibly could.
Psalm 34 declares, “O taste and see that the Lord is good,” and I’ve often received it as a call to meditate on the attributes of God, but lately, I’ve received it in a new way. So much of life comes to us unasked for. That it’s ever seemed otherwise is a power fantasy fueled by consumerism and an excess of choice and frail comforts. Since the world has stopped, “taste and see that the Lord is good,” sounds much more like an invitation to open my eyes and receive what’s given
Unasked for, God is giving the church what it needs. Paradoxically, by being apart for a time, we might learn to be together and want to be together, more than ever, when we’re reunited. Zoom prayers are the glass we see through darkly now, by which we can glimpse the gift we’ve been given: Christ himself and his people, present and committed. The love of the former empowers the latter and draws us together, irresistibly.
Rebuild
A photo of how things feel right now. Note the potential!
Back to the opportunity-cost of the pandemic. As healthcare staff and essential workers work tirelessly to care for the sick and keep the rest of us alive, those of us with time to think ought to. We’re in the whirlwind right now, but the question of whether we’ll return to normal or to something much better is still open.
The costs of doubling down on disembodied forms of community aren’t fully known, but the signs are there. At the very least, many of us are realizing that these tools have only ever been second-best. Instead, we have the chance to put these tools to use as support—not a replacement—for the work of present and embodied local communities.
-Matt
The Virus Is a Reminder of Something Lost Long Ago - The Atlantic
The way we live in 20xx is far from normal in the scope of history.
Habits of mind and lifestyle do not change easily. Without noticing, we slowly slip into the routines of our lives, like becoming so accustomed to living on a noisy street that we cannot remember our previous neighborhood and a time of silence. Some powerful force must strike to awaken us from our slumber. Now we have been struck. We have a chance to notice: We have been living too fast. We have sold our inner selves to the devil of speed, efficiency, money, hyper-connectivity, “progress.”
I’m blogging through a Neil Postman’s Technopoly in a new series on my website: Towards Technopoly. I’ll be summarizing chapters and applying his prescient insights to life online in 20xx.
I interviewed the very cool, very smart K.B. Hoyle on the most recent episode of my podcast, Stranger Still. Character Portrait: Joyce Byers
Related thoughts on tech in the time of coronavirus.
I’ve welcomed a brand new sourdough starter into the world. Well-risen stories to come, hopefully.
Some insight into the second-best nature of our best virtual communication tools from The Convivial Society, L.M. Sacasas’ excellent newsletter.
A Theory of Zoom fatigue:
The problem with video-conferencing is that the body is but isn’t there. This means that our minds are at least partly frustrated as they deploy their non-conscious repertoire of perceptive skills. The situation is more like a face-to-face encounter than most any other medium, but, for that very reason, it frustrates us because it is, nonetheless, significantly different. I suppose we might think of it as something like a conversational uncanny valley. The full range of what the mind assumes should be available to it when it perceives a body, simply isn’t there.
Thank you for reading Good Words. I hope this newsletter helps you think through questions of faith, technology and being in 20xx. All my work is currently free but if you’d like to support what I do, you can become a paying subscriber.
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Thanks Matt for this thoughtful piece of writing, and for showcasing some excellent ideas. Have you listened to This Cultural Moment? I’m curious to know your thoughts on Mark Sayers’ suggestion that the next church awakening will be non-local and distributed through the internet. As you mentioned, it is encouraging to hear that Christians are not pivoting away from their parish but renewing their commitment to local (though virtual) community.