The Church of the Chronically Online

“This has, quite honestly, been my church for a couple of years now,” commented a listener of a popular Christian podcast in its Patreon community — a platform that allows fans to financially support their favorite creators in exchange for additional content and closer interaction.

He was upset about a recent move the podcast had taken, expressing a concern that the hosts were not showing proper care for their followers. A quick scroll through other posts reveals that many paid supporters felt similarly about the podcast’s ecclesial role, even if they didn’t express it quite as explicitly.

“The printing press took the Scripture out of the hands of the elite and put it in the hands of every man,” a fan posted on X to the podcast hosts, urging them to recognize their role as shepherds of an online congregation. “Social media has moved the pulpit the same way.”

Over the last decade, opportunities for building community online have exploded as different platforms provide new ways to foster conversation. In addition to social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, and Instagram, people build relationships in the comments of email newsletters on Substack (a platform that blends email newsletters with social media capabilities) and in the Patreon communities of their favorite podcasts. These platforms have made it increasingly easy for individuals to access trusted writers, podcasters, and other media voices. Gone are the days when the only option was to send fan mail and hope for a response  — now you can spend just $5 a month to “hang out” directly with those beloved voices online.

At the same time, stories of church abuse proliferate. Just about anyone who has experience in a church knows someone who has endured a painful church rift, if they have not endured one themselves. The prevalence of these stories has rocked the faith of a generation of Christians and left them questioning where they can find leaders they trust.

For those undergoing a shift in belief, those who’ve left their church, or those eager for more intellectual conversations about theology than they find in their day-to-day life, these online spaces have been a refuge — an opportunity to connect with others in a similar position and to be exposed to those whose life experiences are different than their own.

Along the way, though, the lines between in-person church and digital spiritual communities have become blurred. This blurring was only accelerated by the movement of churches online during the coronavirus pandemic.

The result is a crisis of ecclesiology — a crisis that is priming a generation already wounded by the church for another round of disillusionment and pain, as well as a crisis that puts writers, podcasters, and social media influencers in the impossible position of pastoring an audience that follows them online.

Digital spiritual communities play an important role in the lives of many Christians today, but in order to prevent this ecclesiological crisis from crushing both leaders and followers, we need a more robust understanding of the purpose and limits of both these online spaces and churches in person. Only by valuing these forms on their own terms can we foster both churches and digital spaces that promote the full flourishing of those within them.

A Sunday Commodity

In the fall of 1975, Bill Hybels planted Willow Creek Community Church in the suburbs of Chicago. His goal was to create a church where the rhythms of worship didn’t become a barrier to new believers — no creeds, no kneeling, no preaching concepts that didn’t connect with daily life. Instead, he wanted to attract newcomers with art, drama, and media presentations. His seeker services worked, and the church grew rapidly through its heavy focus on evangelism.

In the decades that followed, Hybels helped to launch a church-growth movement worldwide. The pillars of his strategy were to use entertaining storytelling to grip guests with the gospel and to encourage pastors with strong business acumen to lead their churches, while finding associates who could thrive in teaching and pastoral care.

These strategies worked, and throughout the 80s, 90s, and early aughts, churches exploded in size. In turn, the strategies became widespread.

“My students today, no matter where they come from — a small town or a big city — think a healthy church is a church in a minimum of four digits, maybe five,” says Brad East, a theology professor at Abilene Christian University and author of The Church: A Guide to the People of God.

Very big churches have always existed, East emphasizes — just look at the size of cathedrals across the European continent — but what is new is the entrepreneurial focus of many pastors. The blending of big personalities and big visions, applied to the role of the pastorate, enabled concentrated growth of the churches these leaders planted.

“My guess is that nine times out of 10,” says East, “it is entirely sincere and the person in question is a unique talent and extraordinarily gifted at communicating the gospel to both the already churched and the unchurched, and so they experience success in a very organic, noncynical way.”

But along the way, the application of this entrepreneurial mindset to church turned Sunday worship into a product for consumption. These congregations raised a generation of believers who understood church as a place to sing along with an excellent band, to hear a sermon from a pastor they only knew from the stage, and to find community within the crowd via a weekly small group — the people they “do life with.”

Thanks to the recent rise in digital media, all these components of church are now available outside the institution itself — and with less cost.

Sermons are available for free on any podcasting app, whether or not the pastor lives in your city (without the pressure to place a check in the offering plate). Your favorite worship bands can be streamed at any time, and you can sing along without fear that others will hear your off-key pitch. Not to mention the fact that you maintain the control to skip over songs you don’t like.

Sure, the community provided within a congregation is harder to replicate, but there are plenty to choose from online (sometimes for just $5 to $7 per month). Plus, there’s no awkward small talk over coffee hour. The charismatic writer, speaker, podcaster, or pastor hosting the space feels like a friend, and it’s easy to get along with the other people they’ve gathered around their ideas.

But can this piecemeal approach actually fulfill the purposes of the gathered church?

“Is church about the communication of information?” asks Daniel Hill, a theology professor at Baylor’s Truett Seminary who writes on theological anthropology and the free church tradition. “Well it’s more efficient to just open your phone and scroll for information.

“[The church has] put itself in the market and said ‘Come consume, come buy some of our goods,’” he explains. “But I can get it all better, cheaper, more conveniently elsewhere.”

Most notably, you can get it online.

In truth, that’s an attractive thought for many people. Church is hard. Pastors preach poor sermons, they sometimes fumble over their words when providing pastoral care. They are finite in capacity to be present for their congregants. And yes, some even use their position to perpetuate or cover up abuse. Congregations are messy, after all. They are full of people in different life stages, from different family backgrounds, with different nuances of belief. The expectations placed on a congregant can be high: volunteer in children’s ministry, serve as an usher, bring food for coffee hour, join a small group. The church finances are regularly on display, and membership asks churchgoers to get financially involved.

In comparison, church demands much more from its congregants than do relationships fostered online. So why not turn to these digital spiritual communities in place of Sunday morning worship?

Where Similarities End

I use the term “digital spiritual communities” to encompass a wide range of forms. Over the past few months, I’ve observed closely the ways that individuals interact in the Patreon communities of two major podcasts geared toward evangelicals who have been disillusioned by the churches of their youth, the Substack and Instagram comments of a few popular writers focused on spiritual formation, and the online platform for a major conference for those who don’t fit in the evangelical conference world. I’ve also spoken with individuals who have found close community online, as well as leaders who have sought to foster this kind of community for others.

Each of these online contexts identifies itself as a space for people who are re-evaluating the faith of their evangelical upbringing, but the language and tone this takes varies from space to space. Some favor audiences who like their theological quandaries with a side of goofiness or sass, others lean into the audience’s existential angst. All are united in their ability to gather an audience that longs for community, connection, and a place to navigate deep questions of life. An audience that longs for a place where they feel like they belong.

It is clear that these communities address a real need for those who engage within them.

“When everyone was in isolation [in 2020],” says one Substack participant I spoke with, “it became a place that felt safe to lament, maybe even a little safer than my in-person community.”

“For lots of people, there’s a kind of stranger safety,” offers Alec Gewirtz, CEO of Nearness, a company facilitating virtual small groups for individuals at every phase of their spiritual journey. “By gathering with people online who don’t live near you, you can feel comfortable in sharing things without the fear that it may get back to someone you know.”

These online spaces do foster real relationships that sometimes lead to in-person gatherings. Gewirtz has witnessed this over and over again through the gatherings drawn together by Nearness. I too have developed close, in-person friendships with individuals I’ve met in Facebook groups and on Twitter.

At the same time, it’s also clear that for some audience members, what feels like healing might actually be a journey into deeper pain — especially when the nature of these communities and the leaders behind them are too easily obscured.

“I accidentally found myself not around a table, but in a funnel,” describes Lex De Weese of the feeling an audience member might have when they realize that there is a business strategy behind the leader they follow. De Weese, a digital marketer for Zondervan, researches what she describes as digital hospitality and author algo-ethics — seeking a Christian ethic for online leadership.

“Transparency is the ruling virtue,” she encourages her authors who must navigate how to engage responsibly with their audience.

At the end of the day, digital communities are, first and foremost, personality-driven businesses. Any business — whether a podcast community or a conference; a digital small group or your favorite author’s Substack; a nonprofit, for-profit, or co-op — must make decisions based on what will allow their business to survive, if not prosper.

With rare exception, these online spaces rely on the magnetism of their leader or leaders to draw in an audience, and they require the audience’s financial support in order to continue providing the platform at hand. This might feel, in some ways, similar to giving a tithe — especially for those who know their pastor about as well as they know the digital leaders they follow.

Often, an audience offers financial support to a writer, podcaster, or influencer because they feel a sense of closeness and connection to the work the creator produces and they want to bond with others who love the leader too. These parasocial connections provide the illusion that an audience knows the person on the other side, perhaps even that the leader also knows you. This feeling of connection helps generate energy around the leader’s platform — the intent is not malicious, it’s a natural response to the ways humans resonate with one another’s stories. But there are always aspects of a leader’s life left purposefully, and necessarily, obscured.

“People come up to me and tell me how lucky I am to do this work,” one writer and podcaster told me. “They don’t know how many nights I cry myself to sleep in hotel rooms because I’m tired of traveling alone.”

The need to think about profit margins and customer satisfaction is not a bad thing. It’s what allows these spaces to provide consumers with the content they like and enables them to fairly compensate the many experts required to get this content in front of an audience. It costs money and time to produce, to market, and to host this kind of digital world.

The problem arises when audience members view their leader as a pastoral or spiritual guide. They assume the content they receive is born out of the leader’s attunement to the virtual congregation’s spiritual longings — unadulterated by the leader’s practical financial needs.

East’s comment about celebrity pastors almost certainly holds true in this regard: Nine times out of 10, a writer, podcaster, or speaker’s work is sincere and their growth is born out of a unique talent to communicate well. They are able to garner energy around an idea and must question how to steward that energy. They recognize a hunger for connection, for theological education, for belonging in a community of like minded people, and they want to address that need. And they are smart strategists and business people as well.

But without proper recognition of the role digital worlds play in our day-to-day lives, these online communities are primed to further injure an already aching generation.

When we treat our digital spheres as a replacement for church, as though the leaders behind them are our pastors or spiritual guides, we place undue expectation on people and a system that is not designed to handle our spiritual, relational, or physical needs in the way a church can.

That unfair expectation is damaging to all who are involved.

The Church Is Not A Curated Aesthetic

If church is simply community plus worship, two distinct elements that can be separated and acquired in alternative forms, then there would be no problem replacing a Sunday morning gathering with these digital communities.

At the heart of our present ecclesiological crisis is the errant belief that this is true.

“You don’t get to curate your ecclesial experience,” says Hill.

“A church is a local gathering of baptized believers in Christ where the good news about Christ is proclaimed in Word and sacrament,” says East. “In other words through the hearing of Scripture and sermon and through receiving the visible Word in the bread and wine of communion.”

Says Hill:“God has done something and bound us together whether we like it or not, whether we recognize it or not. If we’re not actually around one another, then we’re not actually discerning how God in Christ is calling us to live in this particular place in space and time. And if we’re not doing that, then we’re not the church.”

The embodied gathering of God’s people is central to how we live out our faith. The tangibility of communion and baptism affirms that our bodies matter, and with that, all different kinds of bodies matter. This cannot be replicated online, and that is good.

“If I’m having a really bad day, I can go online and find people who are thinking the same thing as me or who have felt what I’m feeling,” says Brianna Dewitt, a single 34-year-old woman who is active in both digital communities and her local church. “But they cannot hug me with a comment online.”

“One of the beauties of church is that it’s filled with people you don’t like, or should be filled with people you don’t like,” says Hill, echoing East’s definition. “Church should be a place where the homeless and the aristocrat worship God together and both ask the pastor to pass them the bread and the wine. You’re not going to find that online.”

Church is one of the few remaining institutions that brings people together across generations, across physical and cognitive abilities, across relationship status and life stage. Even as individual congregations still tend to form around class, ideological, and racial or ethnic identities, participation in the sacraments — which can only be done within an embodied congregation — brings Christians into relationships across these lines as well.

It is good to have words we repeat that were thoughtfully written by generations past, to have sacraments we share that remind us over and over again that we are part of something so much bigger than ourselves, so much bigger than our moment in time, so much bigger than the community of people immediately around us. It is good to make promises to others, and have promises made to us, even when we cannot fully comprehend the commitments we are drawn into.

And it is good for us as human beings to be in spaces where we don’t get to choose.

As pastor Sharon Hodde Miller writes, “We belong to a culture that believes unlimited choice equals freedom, but the data doesn’t support this. Unlimited choice creates anxiety.”

When we attend church, we don’t choose the songs we sing, we don’t choose the Scripture we read, we don’t choose the topic of the sermon, we don’t choose the people we are brought into relationship with.

“Church is a resistance to certain ways of being formed,” says Hill. In other words, the limitations and frustrations of church counteract the ways our digital lives deform us. They break down the illusion that the curation of every aspect of our lives will bring us healing and joy.

There is no adequate digital replacement for church, and this is good.

“You are choosing to be with these people no matter what it turns out they believe on certain things, no matter if you share the same interests in music or books or what you like to do on the weekends,” says Dewitt. “There’s something really important in seeing the value each person brings to the table.”

In-person service(s)

These digital spaces often bill themselves as a helpful antidote for the ways the church has gone astray. Many leaders share stories of their own church pain, and audience members bond over the similar experiences they’ve had.

The desperation with which audiences look for hope and healing in these online spaces is a sign that something has gone awry.

“It may be a sign that something has gone wrong and that it’s not your fault,” says East, aware that for many these digital communities are a balm in the face of deep church pain.

But the answer is not to replace Sunday worship and proximate community with alternatives online. It’s for churches to recognize the deeply held needs of their congregants for connection, for rich theological engagement, and for pastoral care.

And for both the leaders and followers of digital communities to acknowledge the natural limits of what these online spaces provide.