Deliberate Righteousness: The First Step

When talking about doing church online, there are a lot of people out there with a lot of different ideas. If you look to megachurches, for example, you'll hear a lot about how the most important thing is polished and perfected presentation. Others may tell you that what's most important is ease of accessibility, a well-designed and user-friendly website. Still others may tell you that it's all about the social media; making sure that you're using the right platforms to increase your church's visibility.

Things is....none of that matters.

There are churches with terrible, unpolished websites that can't keep up with the number of people checking them out, while professionally-designed and expensive websites sit barren and unseen. There are churches out there spending thousands of dollars on worship performers, editing their worship to perfection, and finding themselves only in the middle of a concert, but not a community.

What's important isn't really any of these things. What's important is authenticity of message.

Now, before you get ahead of me, I want to stress that when I say we need to be authentic, I don't mean to say that we should be unrefined or simplified. Faith is a complex, convoluted process, and the Christian faith in particular is a rat's nest of historical histrionics, creedal conflict, and theological turbulence. Historically, doctrinally, and practically....we're an absolute mess. The sort of mess that requires our leaders to get graduate-level education just to understand and explain it all.

But when we try to simplify that mess, to "translate" it for the uninitiated...we dilute the beauty of a faith identity that is terrible and wonderful in equal measure. People are willing to learn, and to find beauty in that complexity. But, in the same way, people can tell right away when they're being condescended to.

So own that complexity, and don't reject the knowledge, wisdom, and experience at the core of Christian faith!

Beyond that though, how do we embrace this authenticity in practical terms? How do we own that complexity, and communicate love, without turning people off?

In short...what does it mean to be "successful" as a church online?

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Being successful online requires embracing the complexity of faith, and being willing to openly and deliberately embrace that complexity.

Churches fail online when they say "we don't talk about theology; we just talk about love!."

Churches succeed online when they say "We reject any ideology which would legitimate forms of injustice and any doctrine which is unwilling to resist such an ideology in the name of the gospel. (The Belhar Confession, point 4") and then explain what that means to anyone and everyone.

Churches are schools of faith, and pastors are teachers; no teacher ever succeeded by trying to convince their students that they, the students, were as well informed on the subject as their teacher. A teacher succeeds when they acknowledge the disparity of knowledge, and make a space where their students do not feel ashamed of that disparity, but feel encouraged to close that gap.

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To be a successful Christian organization online requires clarity of purpose, expressed clearly and unambiguously for the world to see. It requires the bravery that Christ calls us to in speaking justice and truth to power, in boldly exercising kindness, and never turning away from righteousness, even when it is to our detriment.

Being successful online requires choosing to do the right thing unambiguously, and without reservation, equivocation, or prevarication.

Churches fail all the time whose websites say "we are a welcoming community."

Churches who succeed have websites that say "we welcome LGBTQIA people, cishet people, married people, divorced people, drug addicts and drug dealers alike; the prideful and the fallen, the promiscuous and the traumatized. We welcome absolutely everyone, because in Christ we are all the same. Equally made, and equally loved." And then follow it up with links to specific resources or actions your community either does or wants to do* in order to make everyone practically, measurably welcome.

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It's easy to simply declare yourself a loving, welcoming congregation. But the internet is a counterintuitive sort of place. In environment where words are plentiful, words on their own become meaningless. Generic, vague declarations are useless in this environment. Here, boldness of faith, honesty of principle, and a heart for practical application even if you don't know how to act with justice yet; these things are what people are actually looking for.

What is required then is more than just token effort. This requires deliberate righteousness. For this to work, you will have to make specific, demonstrable choices that demonstrate righteousness even if, and especially when, to act in a righteous way runs the risk of upsetting the normal order to which your congregation, and other congregations in the same vein, may have been accustomed.

In short...you're gonna lose people. At least...at first.

But a church following the teachings of Christ vocally and publicly is an attractive thing, even more so online, and especially in this era where so much evil has been committed in the name of Christ. In that environment, if you start trying to build an organization that does honor Christ...people will notice.

Like the man said; if you build it, they will come!

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* by the way, owning your limitations in light of your desire to do justice is ridiculously important here. If you want to start sheltering immigrants in your community, for example, but you don't have the people, space, or resources, that's OK. But don't wait until you have the means to speak on the issue! Post on your website that your church wants to be a sanctuary to those fleeing persecution, but currently lacks the resources to do so, and invite people to join you in helping out, People will forgive a lack of resources; they won't forgive a lack of courage to try!