LIBERTY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
Assignment Title: Issues Raised for Considering the Shape of a Digital Ecclesiology
Course: CHMN 699 - Internship
Student: Kristine Sage
Date: January 29, 2022
Professor: Dr. Joel Breidenbaugh
Issues Raised for Considering the Shape of a Digital Ecclesiology
Overall, these articles show different ways churches are being impacted by technology,
including on economic, social, and communicative levels, as well as how they are perceived and
framed within civil society as religious organizations. Authors also address churches’ tendencies
to focus primarily on religious and social critiques of digitization and digital technology, which
miss the point and distract them from taking seriously the reality of the broader technological
culture in which they exist.
This does not mean, however, the process of engagement should be without serious
reflection. Indeed, the authors highlight the fact that digital media are indeed a double-edge
sword, simultaneously offering both opportunities and challenges. New technologies offer
advantages such as streamlining church communicative practices and providing members
easier access to church information and teachings. But these advantages must be weighed
against the potential for social media to make private church conversations public, potentially
exposing church structures and leadership to public scrutiny in new ways. Indeed, several of
these studies show how the integration of digital media in church work can lead to the loss of a
unified voice and the ability to manage divisiveness within the church. Emphasis on using
technology to mediate religious experiences and encounters has the potential to shift the
traditional focus of the church, so offline structures or gatekeepers may no longer seen as
prime definers of what constitutes church.
Yet, as these studies also point out, even when digital media cause a loss of church control
over its communication and message, they cannot be ignored. At the most basic level, churches
must interact with new technical and communicative infrastructures in a society undergirded
by digital media. They must engage with these to perform the most basic functions in a digital
society, such as mailings, record keeping, payrolls, and structural communication. Some
churches will find interacting with or incorporating digital media more challenging than others.
This may be due to their desire to create a distanced relationship between themselves and
modernity and general society, or due to the nature of their hierarchical or layered structures
that seek to tightly manage membership and liturgical practices. Yet even groups hesitant about
digital technology have found it is almost impossible to avoid. Digital technology use has
become almost a requirement for churches to perform the most basic organizational and
community structured tasks today.
As digital media becomes a more central resource for many churches, their pragmatic uses
often open the door for staff to experiment with new forms of digital integration for non-
essential purposes. In these studies, we have seen digital media described as serving as pastoral
support for communication and ministry work, a missional tool providing new outreach
opportunities that connect online-offline spaces, and a form of liturgical enhancement enabling
the re-imagination of the worship environment and its associated practices. Indeed, in some
church contexts, digital technology has also become an important symbolic tool, demonstrating
a church’s fluency with contemporary society or its attempt to be seen as culturally relevant in
spaces where religion is decreasing in cultural influence.
This means, as several articles suggest, there is a need for ecclesial leadership to cultivate
digital literacies that do not simply focus on the pragmatic use of technology, but literacies that
unpack the theological ethos and values of different technologies and their implementation in
church environments. These digital literacies also require churches and church leaders to
understand how to construct digital resources and presences online that match and echo their
core vision and mission. This requires creating a flow and connection between a church’s
online-digital and offline-embodied identities.
Overall, these articles argue that churches seeking to move towards a digital ecclesiology
should focus not simply on how technology should be used in the church environment, but also
on why and for what purpose they should choose to engage digital media. Theological
reflection should be at the heart of this strategic reflection. Several authors suggest churches
should focus on a moderation of technology approach. Here technology is seen as something to
be understood, guided, and informed with theological values and ecclesiological frameworks.
Moving towards a digital ecclesiology should be approached as a process of thoughtful, faith-
based reflection and communal conversations that consider both the historic and emergent
social and ecclesiological implications of digital media integration for a church in a digital age.
References
1 NA, (21 May 2012), ‘Elizabeth Drescher: Digital Ministry, Made for the Mainline, Faith and
Leadership.’ https://faithandleadership.com/elizabeth-drescher-digital-ministry-made-
mainline.com.
2 Jonathan Armstrong, (April 12, 2019), ‘Digital Ecclesiology Podcast.’
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57759952f5e231b6a29263c5/t/
5da93f1084400e460a076927/1571372817416/Digital+Ecclesiology+Transcript.pdf.
3 J. Rice, (10 May 2012), Models of the Church and Social Media, The New Media Project.
http://cpx.cts.edu/newmedia/findings/essays/models-of-the-church-and-social-media.
4 (Rice, 2012, http://cpx.cts.edu/newmedia/findings/essays/models-of-the-church-and-social-
media).
