A conversation with Ryan Panzer ("Grace and Gigabytes") on how technology has shaped our culture and what that could mean for the future of the church, what it looks like to align ministry with the values of our shared tech-shaped culture, and what hybrid ministry looks like in high-tech, low-tech and no-tech congregations.

A conversation with ELCA pastor/author Dave Daubert, author of Becoming a Hybrid Church. Dave’s goal is to help leaders work with their congregations to imagine how the pandemic is not just something to get through, but also a platform for the future work of the church: a new church which already has a wider reach (which is exciting) but may have to juggle more plates if we don’t make good choices (which is scary).

We used to build our relationships with one another by meeting face to face or with a phone call or maybe an email. Now we nurture our friendships through social media as well as in person get-togethers and written communications. Collaboration used to be difficult because it involved coordinating schedules to be in the same place at the same time. Platforms like Zoom, Google Drive, Slack, Teams and others make the restraints of time and place disappear!

As the COVID-19 vaccine comes into wide use and we can open our doors again, we have a choice: do we spend our energy resuscitating old ways of being church, or resurrecting to new ways? We can’t go back to the past for the simple reason that it isn’t there anymore.

The USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture’s Reimagining Church Initiative seeks to help church leaders create thriving organizations in the context of the challenges facing American religious institutions, ranging from the decline of religious affiliation to the recent coronavirus pandemic and its effect on how religious groups can come together as a community. Not only do religious institutions have to contend with their current inability to meet in person to worship and be together as a community, fewer Americans are involved in congregational life than ever before.

The current crisis presents opportunities to rethink what it means to be a congregation. By bringing together church leaders from a variety of Christian traditions, we believe that current challenges can be confronted, and opportunities developed. By collectively confronting the current challenges while simultaneously looking forward to what being church can look like in the future, we believe that a process of reimagining the church can yield stronger, thriving congregations that serve both their members and their host communities.

Resources for Thriving Congregations