How to be the church in a digital culture

Congregations typically aspire to be stable communities. They want to be the steady, faithful center of a person’s life. The concept of a network, however, offers a new lens for looking at the church, because networks are more fluid than communities. In…

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The hybrid congregation

One of the changes that the pandemic has brought to many congregations is that geographic proximity is no longer a primary factor in determining who participates in our congregational life. A family-sized congregation reports that former members who moved across the country…

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Moving From Leadership 1.0 to 2.0

Not only has the Internet, particularly social media, changed the way we operate, but we can use it as a lens to view congregational leadership from a different perspective, a network perspective. Digital strategists talk about the development of the…

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Pastoral Transitions in the Age of Social Media

Social media has changed many aspects of our lives and how we engage with others. We shop differently, research differently, communicate differently, and we experience community differently. Many of us broadcast our lives through status updates, photos of coffee and…

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Virtual Community

My pastoral care professor in seminary instructed us to meet each member in his or her home during our first year at a new church. It was sound advice at the time. But there has been a change, a deep…

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