Thread by @crazypastor

Hi.

The Christian church as we know it — the brick and mortar spaces of the literate age — is declining. Rapidly.

People are not walking through the doors of the church anymore. This is just math. This is happening.

And we are shifting into the digital age.

Just like during the Protestant Reformation, when the known world was an *oral* culture, and the printing press was shifting EVERYTHING to print.

These shifts are ginormous, and cannot be understated.

The church as it had been was oral in nature. It distrusted anything that was printed…it saw the downturn of society and morals in the written word.

…and yet the printing press was literally changing the world.

Fast forward to now.

The digital culture — shifting from print culture — has its downsides.

There are people who never leave their computer or pull their face from their smartphones. Sure.

And also — the digital age ain’t going anywhere, y’all.

And we can’t stop it. We are living in the digital age.

And there are some of us — like @OurBibleApp and @TheSlateProject — who are trying to encounter and engage with people *online* to recognize that holy community exists here.

It’s not *in lieu of* face-to-face interactions (which, like digital, also have their downsides that we often brush aside), it’s in addition to them.

What happens online is real. And it can be holy.

But I feel the print culture in the church clutching its fading reality, holding on for dear life.

This mindset blames everything on digital culture — from depression to disconnection to the housing crisis to mass shootings.

It would be laughable if it wasn’t so widespread.

And this mindset blames the fading of brick-and-mortar print-culture church…on the digital age.

In effect, it sees the growing number of people refusing to walk through the doors of a church — and it blames THEM for not valuing face-to-face community enough.

It blames THEM for being stressed and spending too much time on things that the print culture doesn’t value.

That’s not on us in the digital age. It’s just not. We are trying to figure out how to live well and connect deeply just like every other time in history.

The print culture pines away for the “good ole’ days,” a MAGA-type fanciful Christianity where everyone went to church and respected their elders and blah blah blah.

It routinely & conveniently leaves out the brutal white supremacist realities of the 1950s and 60s, instead opting for pious proclamations of “believing on the Lord Jesus and being saved.”

And this mindset imagines any deviation from this whitewashed Christianity to be invalid.

Guess what? The church of the digital age, by and large, sees social justice as inextricably linked to the Jesus movement.

And just because it’s not what the print culture is used to doesn’t make it wrong or unbiblical.

“But online engagement doesn't equal participation in the Kingdom of God.”

Neither do potlucks or youth lock-ins or quilting groups, Karen, but here we are.

Just because the church has done the same things for hundreds of years doesn’t make them right or effective.

ESPECIALLY during a shift as massive as what’s happening right now.

Yes, those of us forming faith communities online spend a lot of time on our phones. That’s not inherently bad.

Yes, we are often more political.

Yes, we cuss and talk about sex and find hi-fucking-larious memes like this:

But we’re not over here saying brick-and-mortar churches aren’t “real,” even though we know so many who refuse to walk through church doors because of abuse/ trauma/ generally shitty behavior.

And yet those churches are constantly telling us online that what we do isn’t real.

And, tbh, it sounds more and more desperate — people are seeing their worship numbers dwindle and those sitting in the pews getting older and — I get it. It’s scary.

And so they’re lashing out — and the prime culprit is what it’s always been for every generation: the young'ins with their newfangled technology and their casual dress and their lack of respect and and and and….

It’s all just so tired.

(Sidenote: I think it’s the same dynamics in play that let old white men like Steve King get away with white supremacist bullshittery and young white men like Paul Ryan get away with knowing literally nothing — but give the 11th degree to @AOC and @IlhanMN fir being ‘too green.’)

Anyways, if you’re still reading to the end of this rambling thread, I applaud you.

My point (I think): the world is changing, and the church is refusing to.

But Jesus is all about change, y’all. He rarely praises anything just because “that’s the way we’ve always done things."

Let’s do a bit more of following Jesus, and a bit less of worshipping a dying institution that’s too often co-opted his name.