The digital transformation is already here.
Learn how to adapt and unleash it to reach even more people in your community.
We are in the midst of a rapid, radical reordering of society, driven by big data, cloud computing, the internet of things, and artificial intelligence. Some churches have dabbled on the edges, with things like livestreaming the church service or communicating via social media, but few have truly embraced the digital transformation.
It requires a fundamental rethinking of church communication tactics and even the core metrics of ministry, but in return, it offers a wider opportunity for reaching younger generations and fueling church growth.
In this webinar, SermonView founder and president Larry Witzel lays out a vision for what the digital transformation might look like in a local church. He’ll share a digital communication framework that can be adopted by churches of all sizes. He’ll also talk about some specific digital tactics to use in this framework, like using your church’s website, email list, SMS messaging, search engine marketing, YouTube video ads, and social media.
You’ll leave with practical suggestions for adopting a digital communication strategy at your own church, reaching more people of all generations with the everlasting gospel.
Welcome to today’s webinar! We’ll be talking about The Digital Transformation of Ministry, and how to adapt to these changes and reach more people in your community. I really believe that a church who embraces this digital transformation can be incredibly effective at reaching more people for Christ, especially emerging generations. My goal for today is to give you a framework for understanding the digital transformation, along with some specific steps you can take to begin the process in your church.
For some of you who maybe aren’t tech savvy, this might sound overwhelming. But I’m going to break it down for you as simply as possible, and once you get it, I think you’ll see how much potential it brings to ministry in your community.
To understand what’s going on with the digital transformation we’re currently in, let’s look backward for a minute.
History: Stability with Bursts of Change
When you take a high level look at history, you’ll notice that there are long stretches of relative stability in how society operated, interrupted by periods of rapid change brought on by some technological innovation.
So, for example, think of how church ministry was done prior to the Gutenberg press. Imagine being a pastor with NO BOOKS on your shelf. Each copy of the Bible took years to write by hand, and that was it. Without books, even reading was a skill few people had. Then, in the 1450s, Gutenberg developed a method for mass-producing books. Now, it was still slow, and in the first decade Gutenberg only produced a few hundred Bibles. But it launched a radical reordering of society. Because of the printing press, knowledge became more widely available. Schooling became more important. And the Gutenberg press led directly to the Protestant Reformation within just one generation after its introduction. Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the Wittenburg door in 1517, about 60 years after Gutenberg first invented the press. It led to a radical reordering of society that took a couple of generations to work out.
Fast forward to 1837, when Samuel Morse first demonstrated a working telegraph between Baltimore and Washington DC. Prior to the telegraph, news could only travel as fast as a human, so news would take days to get between the South and the North of the United States, and it would take weeks to get news from Europe. With the telegraph, that time was reduced to minutes. By 1857, there were 33,000 miles of telegraph lines crisscrossing the United States, and the first transatlantic cable was laid. This radically accelerated the speed of society. It also contributed directly to the Civil War. Before there was naturally time for reflection, since it would take hours or days to travel between cities. But the telegraph made news instantaneous, leading to knee-jerk reactions. The telegraph led to a radical reordering of society, one based on speed.
One more example. Let’s talk about television. In 1948, the first commercial television station was broadcasting to almost no one. A couple of years later, in 1950, just 1% of households in the United States had a TV set. But just 10 years later, in 1960, over 90% of households had a television, and they were watching almost 5 hours per day. The television changed how homes were built, and the furniture in the living room. It changed how we used our leisure time. It led to a homogenization of the news, with just 3 broadcast networks broadcasting essentially the same news stories. Television programming reduced the attention span of Americans, as the brain came to expect a break every 7 or 8 minutes. The visual imagery of television directly led to passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, when people saw with their own eyes the police dogs viciously attacking protesters in Birmingham, and children being sprayed with high-pressure hoses. This reordering of society once again caused unrest throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s.
The Digital Transformation in Society
This brings us to today, and the digital transformation we’re currently experiencing. Think about how much has changed in the last 25 years. When you wanted to find an auto mechanic then, you went to the Yellow Pages. You paid your bills with written checks sent through the mail. If you wanted to visit someone, you had to call using a landline and get the address, which you looked up on a paper map. Of course today, you use Google or Yelp to find an auto mechanic, you pay your bills electronically, you text your friends, and use Google Maps to get turn-by-turn directions to get to their house. Television viewing has been declining since 2010, and last year Americans spent more time watching online streaming programs than broadcast television and cable combined. The computer in your pocket is more powerful than the fastest supercomputers 25 years ago, and we have instant access to whatever information we want.
Companies who have not embraced the digital transformation are gone. I’m talking about major Fortune 500 companies, like Blockbuster, Borders Books, Kodak, Radio Shack, and Sears. They missed the digital transformation and went bankrupt.
The digital transformation has changed how we are entertained, how we learn, how we interact with each other, how we communicate, even how we experience community. I’ve watched my teenage children and their friends, all looking down at their devices, texting each other as they sit together in the same room.
Analog Islands in a Digital Sea
In the midst of all this, I’ve been asking myself this question: What does the digital transformation look like in a local church? If organizations that missed the digital transformation have disappeared, how do we keep that from happening to us? What does this digital transformation look like in a local church?
Now, I want to be clear: I’m not talking about creating an online-only church. This is not a cyber church, or an all digital church. People today crave in-person experiences and community more than ever before, and what the church offers is a face-to-face, present community of faith. I’m not talking about online church. I’m talking about church online. Those are very different things.
The digital transformation has not made society completely online. We still eat food, though today you can buy your groceries online and get them delivered. We still go to restaurants, but often we’ll order ahead and have it waiting to pick up. We still go see a doctor in person, though you can schedule the appointment online, and even do a videoconference visit for certain ailments. We still live in a physical world, and ministry still happens in this physical world.
However, technology has changed how we interact with this physical world. And today, churches are analog islands in a digital society. We expect people to get in their car, drive to the church, and when they walk in we hand them a bulletin printed on paper, ask them to sit in a pew, where they hear announcements about other activities, then they listen to a sermon that someone speaks to them, and then they leave. There is nothing digital about this experience.
And I’ll be honest, everything I just described is completely foreign to young adults. As I was reflecting on this, I realized something: We haven’t lost the young adult generation. We never had them. Our analog expression of the community of faith is totally foreign to the digital natives.
So again, what does the digital transformation look like in a local church?
Parasocial Relationships
To begin to answer that question, let’s talk about the rise of social media influencers. There is a phenomenon today, particularly among Millennials and Gen Z, where people build relationships with popular personalities through social media. The 6 influencers shown here combined have over 250 million followers just on Instagram, and literally billions of views on YouTube. My son is into Minecraft, and follows a bunch of Minecraft players, including this one, Technoblade. My son would watch YouTube videos of Technoblade playing Minecraft for hours, while playing Minecraft himself. Well, last year word got out that Technoblade had cancer. Here is a picture of him on hospice, showing off a plaque from YouTube that he got when we hit 10 million subscribers. A year ago last June, he passed away, and when my 13-year-old son found out he came into my room crying: “Dad, Technoblade died!” I spent the afternoon consoling him, and he joined millions of Minecraft players around the world who changed their skin to the pig king for a few days to honor Technoblade.
What in the world is going on here? My son never met Technoblade. Technoblade had no idea who my son is. But here he is crying over this person who died. What’s going on here?
Well, it turns out there’s a ton of research on this. My son had built what researchers call a parasocial relationship with Technoblade. A parasocial relationship is the illusion of a relationship with someone in the media. It’s a social connection that is one-sided. My son had a relationship with Technoblade, but Technoblade did not have a relationship with my son. Here’s the thing: parasocial experiences lead to reactions that are surprisingly similar to in-person social experiences.
One researcher put it this way: “Human brains are still unable to differentiate between interactions in real life and online virtual environments or with real friends and simulated or artificial friends, such as television actors, people encountered on social media, and even virtual influencers” (Munnukka & Reinikainen, 2023, p. 359).
Parasocial experiences were first identified in the early days of television, back in the 1950s, but over the last 15 years there’s been a ton of scholarly attention paid to this. A lot of research has looked at the rise of social media influencers and the parasocial relationships that are formed, especially in emerging generations. Social anxiety, loneliness, and depression are particularly prevalent among Gen Z, and one way they deal with this is by forming parasocial relationships with influencers online. In fact, I wonder if the social anxiety isn’t pushing Gen Z toward parasocial relationships, because they are safe. There’s no risk. They can sit back and watch their favorite YouTube personalities or TikTokers without fear of being judged. But the emotional reaction to parasocial relationships is almost the same as the emotions connected to in-person social experiences. It may be an illusion, it may be one-sided, but it is very real.
If you’re beginning to understand this idea of parasocial relationships, say something in the comments. Give me another thumbs up there.
Digital Transformation of Ministry
Okay, some of you already see where I’m headed, but let me make the connection explicit. Let’s go back to our question: What does the digital transformation look like in a local church? I believe the core shift is using digital media to foster parasocial relationships, then leveraging those parasocial relationships as a bridge to in-person community.
Stop and think about it. What does church offer people? A spiritual community, relationships with other believers. God created humans with the innate need to belong to community, and church exists to fulfill this fundamental need to belong. We are social creatures, and although church of course has a theological component, and a vertical relationship with God, church is fundamentally a social experience, with horizontal relationships between humans.
So our goal is in-person community. People today crave in-person experiences and real, life-giving community. But the digital transformation allows us to accelerate this relationship-building through digital media. It allows us to break through the social anxiety to connect with people right where they’re at. It allows us to get out of the church building and begin developing relationships with people in the community. When the time is right, we can then invite these people to an in-person experience where that relationship can be deepened.
A couple of months ago we did a webinar with Dr. Hiram Rester, a pastor evangelist in Columbia, Missouri. In that conversation, he talked about how he uses YouTube advertising to share concise spiritual messages in the community around his church. His goal was to get more Millennials and Gen Zers out to an evangelistic series, and he found great success at that. But one side effect he found was that people began to recognize him when he was out and about. People will stop him at the grocery store or mini mart. He told me about going into a smoothie shop, and the 18-year-old kid behind the counter recognized him. “Are you that YouTube Bible guy?” he asked. Hiram didn’t have to persuade this young person to have a spiritual conversation. He was ready! He had built a parasocial relationship with Hiram, and it accelerated the in-person interaction, because he felt like he already knew Hiram. And it became an opening for ministry, as Hiram got to know him. It went from a one-sided parasocial relationships to a true, two-way, interactive, in-person, social experience.
Hirem is using technology to build these parasocial relationships. He can go visit his daughter at college, knowing that the message of the Kingdom of God is being preached 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, reaching people where they are and building parasocial relationships with them. Then when the time is right, he can invite them to an experience where that relationship can continue in person.
One last thing about parasocial relationships before I move on to talking about tools for the digital transformation. When you think of “social media influencer,” what comes to mind? I know I think of a young, stylish person. But just this week, the Wall Street Journal had an article about a new trend, older influencers now called “granfluencers.” These are people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s who have built large followings on social media. The top 10 granfluencers on social media today have over 100 million followers combined, of which 74% are aged 18-34. So you don’t have to be young to build parasocial relationships with young adults. Anyone can do it!
Communication Channels: Control versus Reach
Let’s go back to the digital communication channels we talked about at the very beginning. When we look at digital communication channels, one of the factors to consider is control versus reach. Some channels give you tight control over how you present the message, but may not give you a lot of reach. Reach is how many new people does this channel allow you to access? Control versus reach.
So for example, your website gives you a high degree of control over how you present your message, but without any way to drive traffic to your website, it has very low reach. An Instagram post, on the other hand, has the potential to reach a large audience, but you have no control of who it actually reaches. Meta controls the algorithm that decides who will see that post. You can select the photo and maybe add a color filter to it, and you can write the caption, but that’s it. So high reach potential, but low control.
So we end up with two clear clusters on this graph, the ones with higher control and the ones with higher reach. Email, text messaging, a podcast, Discord server, Slack, these are higher control with lower reach. Facebook posts, TikTok, YouTube, these are higher reach with lower control.
Social media influencers spend a tremendous amount of energy creating content to build an audience through the social media algorithms. They create content that people will like and share, which the algorithm recognizes as good content that it then pushes out to more people. But they are relying on the algorithm, which is controlled by a big corporation and constantly changing. Facebook’s algorithm for deciding what to show in somebody’s feed uses AI to process 10 thousand different variables. It’s so complicated, even Facebook engineers don’t really know how it works.
I don’t want you to try to use the algorithm to grow an audience. First of all, it’s really hard. Second, it’s going to be a global audience, and most of your followers will be outside your geographic area of ministry. If our goal is in-person engagement, then you really want to focus on reaching people in your specific geographic area.
That’s where paid advertising comes in. If you run search engine ads, you don’t have complete control over the messaging in the ads, but you do have a fair amount of control, and it does give you a broader reach. So a website using Google Ads to drive traffic would be here. Facebook and Instagram Ads give you a high reach and a fairly high degree of control over the message. Same with YouTube ads.
So control versus reach is an important distinction, and different communication channels will have different value to you, depending on what you want to accomplish.
What’s the point here? I want to see you become an influencer, by building parasocial relationships with people in your community. But instead of using the algorithm to build a global audience through your social posts, you’ll be using advertising to grow an audience in the community around your church. Your church will be an influencer, but instead of using the algorithm, you’ll use advertising to reach people geographically near you.
Marketing Funnel
When we talk about the digital transformation in society, one of the key marketing concepts is the idea of a marketing funnel. There are a lot of nuances to marketing funnels, and I’m not going to get into the details today. I’m planning that our next webinar will be specifically about digital marketing funnels and how they can be used for evangelism. But I did want to mention it because it is a crucial concept in the digital transformation.
Essentially, you use organic posts on social media as well as advertising to offer something of value to people. You direct them to your website, where you collect their information and invite them to subscribe to your email newsletter or opt in to text messages. You’ve now moved them from a high reach medium to a high control medium, and you can continue to communicate with them in the future. That’s the gist of the digital marketing funnel. High reach channels lead to the website, which leads to high control channels. Again, there are a ton of nuances, but I wanted to mention it because it’s such a crucial concept in the digital transformation. I’ll be doing a webinar on the digital marketing funnel in the next few months.
Spiritual Communication
Okay, I want to talk about spiritual communication. I said I want you to become an influencer in your town. What is it you’re trying to influence? You want to inspire and influence people to take a step closer to Jesus. Isn’t that what preaching is at its core? It’s influence. You want to motivate change in belief or behavior. You want to help people be more obedient to the call of Christ. And this shouldn’t be limited to 30 minutes on Sabbath morning. It shouldn’t be limited to your evangelistic series. The digital transformation gives you tools to blow out the walls of the church and share your spiritual message to a wider audience.
Let’s take all this work you put into your sermon and do more than just preach it. You spend 10, 15 hours doing exegesis and assembling stories and key points and your call to action. Don’t limit the result all that work to just Sabbath morning. Let’s repurpose that for the digital world.
So I want to propose a new sermon workflow. First, work on your sermon. Follow your normal sermon prep process. If you write out a manuscript, keep doing that. If you write out bullet points with key transitions and a call to action, keep doing that. Prepare your sermon the way you’ve been doing that.
Then, when you’re done with your preparation, take an extra 90 minutes to repurpose that content for the digital environment. Pull out your key points, your quotes, your scripture, your call to action. Then record short videos, each with just one of these things. Make 6 videos, which you will then post every day in your social channels. Videos are important, because they help to build those parasocial relationships. You could also create 6 graphics with these points, which you can also post on your social media accounts.
Also make a 90-second summary, with your key points and your call to action, and record that to use in your YouTube advertising. Put that video on your website, along with the written summary. Put that video at the top of your weekly email, along with the written summary, as a spiritual thought for the week. Send out a text message with a link to that video summary. Push that short, concise content out through every one of your channels.
With practice, you can get this all done in about an hour, after you’ve completed the rest of your sermon prep. Then post these each day during the the week after you’ve preached your sermon. You’re leveraging all that preparation you did to create digital content that can be used to influence a broader audience to take a step forward in faith.
Habituated vs Inspired Volunteers
I want to quickly mention something about change in a church. We’re talking about a digital transformation of your church, but I don’t believe this needs to be a core cultural shift, and I also don’t think it will impact your church volunteers.
Let me explain. The Sabbath morning activities at your church are powered by habit. The deacon knows how to unlock the church and turn on the furnace, and can literally do it half asleep, because it’s all habit. The sound team knows where the mics and cords are and how to set it all up, because they’ve done it repetitively for so long it’s habit. The Sabbath School teachers know where to pick up the Little Friend or the Guide magazine to distribute, the musicians know what to do. Church runs on habit, and once a habit is established changing it is hard work. That’s one of the reasons why the first few weeks of pandemic closures were so exhausting for churches who shut down, because there was no muscle memory for how to do church. Everything was different. People had to think, and it was painful.
So these habituated volunteers are running on habit. Then how do you make any changes? How do you innovate? Changing habits requires inspiration. Innovation in a church requires unleashing inspired volunteers to pursue their vision.
However, there is nothing so annoying to a habituated volunteer than an inspired volunteer changing how things are done at the church. So innovation requires creating some sort of firewall between your habituated volunteers and the inspired volunteers who are innovating. It requires careful management. Once the innovation has been developed, then there is a process for deploying it through your habituated volunteers to minimize the stress. It’s a whole process.
So when you hear about this digital transformation of ministry, you might be concerned about how this is going to impact your habituated volunteers. Well, here’s the good news. It doesn’t impact them. The only person who needs to make a change is the preacher, because you’re taking your sermon content and prepping it for distribution through your other communication channels, and your team who are actually handling the mechanics of those posts and ads. The core ministries of the church are actually untouched.
The digital transformation is an overlay that goes over your weekly activities. You’re not changing what happens at your in-person gatherings. You’re taking what happens there and pushing it out into the digital space. That means you can move forward with the digital transformation without impacting your week-to-week volunteers.
It also means that while there are things you need to do as the pastor, as you’re taking an extra step after your sermon preparation, you can literally outsource the mechanics of this digital transformation. If you have volunteers who can help you, that’s great. But it’s not required. You can work with an organization like SermonView to begin the digital transformation process, then move this work to your church community as God brings inspired volunteers to you.
While the digital transformation is a fundamental shift in how you think of ministry, we can help you with that execution. SermonView can help power the digital transformation in your church.
Tools for the Digital Transformation
CRM Software
Okay, let’s talk about some tools you’ll need for the digital transformation. First, as you can imagine, you’re going to have to manage a higher volume of relationships. In addition, parasocial relationships more tenuous. Because of this, you’re going to need some way to manage all this information, some way to keep track of everyone. That’s what a CRM is for. A CRM stands for Customer Relationship Software, like SalesForce, HubSpot, and Zoho CRM. One could argue that eAdventist is actually a CRM, though that is missing a much of features. To be really helpful, you’ll need a way to capture information about each person, and make notes each time you interact with them. Ideally you’ll have the ability to text and email directly from the CRM and set reminders to follow up with someone later on. These are all core functions of a CRM program. You need a CRM to be remain effective, particularly as you grow and develop new relationships.
SermonView has developed a CRM specifically for Adventist evangelism, called InterestTracker. It’s a robust CRM that allows you to segment your list, add notes, & track activity. It’s cloud-based so you can access it anywhere you have internet access, and it centralized so all your users always have the latest information. It offers multiple user roles for your whole team. The user-friendly design and customizable notification settings mean you never miss a new lead or reminder to connect.
It also seamless integrates with all of SermonView’s marketing solutions, like our event pre-registration system and our Bible study lead generation program. The basic features are free and always will be for every church in the North American Division. There are additional paid features, like text messaging and attendance tracking, that are also available. You can learn more about InterestTracker at InterestTracker.org.
Your Church Website
I already mentioned the key role your church website will play in the marketing funnel, but I want to take it a step further. Your church website should be the central, authoritative hub for all your communication, including the spiritual influence messages you’re trying to get out there. Your website should not be about your church, though that information does need to be available. Rather, it should primarily be a venue for evangelistic and discipleship content. If you’re preaching it, put it on the website.
Now this is harder to do if you have an Adventist Church Connect website provided by the NAD. So SermonView offers a website service, Evangelism Websites. It’s focused on reaching new people, but it also has features specifically for your members and leaders, too. It’s built on the most popular platform, WordPress. The service has multiple options, including content management as well as managed digital marketing.
Related to this, you don’t just want a website, but you also want to be visible out in the search engines. We do search engine optimization as part of the website setup. But we also offer Google search engine advertising to keep you visible as an add-on to our website product. The campaign is managed by one of our digital marketing coordinators, and we will run ads for general keywords like “church near me” or “church in vancouver,” those types of things. We also have a list of keywords we recommend specifically related to Seventh-day Adventist doctrine. So, for example, we’ll run ads when someone in your community searches for “Sabbath,” and we’ll direct them to a page on the website with an article about the Sabbath. Ideally, you’ll have a short video about the Sabbath, in addition to a short article, with a form inviting people to request a Bible study on the topic. We’ll do the same thing for other keywords, like “Second Coming” and “what happens when you die.” Each will send the user to a page on that topic, with a call to action to capture their information so you can continue communicating with them.
Google ads are available at discounted rates when bundled with your church website build.
YouTube advertising
Our newest service that we just launched is YouTube advertising. We can run YouTube ads leading up to an event, or run them systematically throughout the year to raise awareness for your church and help you build parasocial relationships with people in your town. We train you on how to record selfie videos, and we’ll provide coaching and feedback to help you grow in your skills. Once you record it, we’ll handle everything else: video editing, lower third graphics, audio sweetening, call to action slate, rending, uploading to YouTube, and running the ads. It’s all managed by a digital marketing coordinator, to help you get maximum results.
We have a year-long service that we call a pastor branding program. Again, you record the videos, we provide coaching and feedback with every video, and we handle the editing, rendering and uploading to YouTube. Then we’ll set up the campaign. We’ll also give you content ideas, based on what we’ve seen work best in other campaigns.
This program is not cheap. It ranges from $5,000 for the year, to record one video per month, up to $15,000 to record 4 videos per month. A portion of that service fee is allocated to the ad spend, so that includes the cost of running the ads on YouTube. We coach and give you feedback, so you’re improving throughout the year, and we handle all the mechanics of the videos.
Digital Transformation Bundle
We wanted to make it easy for you to get started with the digital transformation in your church, so we’ve created the digital transformation bundle. This is a collection of everything you’ll need to move your church into the digital realm.
First, we’ll build you a new outreach-oriented website, focused on your spiritual messages, like we talked about earlier. Then we’ll set up all the Google search engine ads for the keywords appropriate for your ministry. We’ll also include content management, so we’ll update the website each week for you to keep the content fresh and up to date.
We’ll also get you set up with InterestTracker, so you’ll have a CRM specifically designed for Adventist evangelism. We’ll include subscriptions to every module, including text messaging with 2,000 credits each month and AttendanceTracker. You’ll be able to send bulk text messages to specific segments of your list, or to everyone, and you can use AttendanceTracker to keep track of your weekly worship attendance, in addition to your evangelistic events.
You’ll also get our YouTube pastor branding program, so we’ll handle all the mechanics of editing, posting, and running ads for your 90-second sermon summary every week. You’ll be able send us 4 videos each month, and we’ll provide coaching and feedback on every video so you’ll improve your own skills as the year progresses.
We’ll also include Facebook and Instagram advertising using the same videos as YouTube, helping you reach a wider audience. All these ads on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram will lead back to your website, where you’ll be able to capture information about people who want what you’re offering, whether a Bible study or book or something else. When someone submits a request, it flows automatically into InterestTracker, where you’re alerted to that request so you can begin communicating directly with that interest.
We’ll even include an Unlimited Plus subscription to our biblical graphics library at SermonView.com, giving you access to art that you can use in your sermons and videos. This license also allows you to use these graphics in videos you post online, so you’re covered there.
This digital transformation bundle gives you access to 5 different skillsets at SermonView, including video editing, social media advertising, YouTube advertising, and search engine marketing. If you were to hire someone with all these skills to do this for you, that’s a full-time job with valuable skills that would cost you $30-$40,000 minimum. If you were to buy these products individually from SermonView, the cost would be about $25,000.
With this digital transformation bundle, we’ll do all of this for you for $19,900 for the year.
A large portion of this cost is the actual ad spend, which is included with this program. Every month we’ll be running about $700 worth of ads across Google search, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
This is a brand new program, which we’ve never offered before. We’re very excited to support you by offering this bundle to power your church’s digital transformation of ministry.
Embracing the Digital Transformation
Look, the digital transformation is happening all around us, whether we like it or not. And churches who don’t embrace this change are going to die, as the digital natives turn their back on our analog way of doing church. SermonView is at the cutting edge of powering the digital transformation, and we’d love to support you as your church makes this transition.
We are in the midst of a rapid, radical reordering of society, a digital transformation. Most churches remain an analog island in a digital sea, and if we don’t embrace this digital transformation, we are going to die. We haven’t lost the young adult generation. We never had them, because the way we do church in these analog ways are completely foreign to the digital natives.
When we embrace this digital transformation, however, it blows our ministry out beyond the walls of the church. We can become significant influencers encouraging people from all walks of life to take the next step closer to Jesus. We’ll go where the people actually are, and make a real difference in the community. I believe the digital transformation can truly change the world, as God works through us to reach new generations for Christ.