Digital Parish: Thriving strategies for engaging online communities

Ryan Dunn:

Welcome to "Pastoring in the Digital Parish," your resource and point of connection for bringing your congregation into the digital age and leveling up your digital ministry toolkit. I'm Ryan Dunn, your host and proctor for this digital ministry class that you missed in seminary. 

We’ve had some really watershed-kind-of conversations lately. At least, for me, these conversations have been super-enlightening and challenging… particularly around the future of ministry. Our conversations with Charles Vogl about what people need now and what they’re looking for… and our conversation with James Kang about really got the gears turning over what the future role of minister looks like. And then I got thinking about the various people we’ve spoken with through this podcast, especially those who we’ve been checking in with in regards to how it started and how it’s going.

Those ministers are mostly part of niche ministries… at least in digital space. They’ve found success in digital space because they have identified a tight community.

So I’ve been entertaining all of these thoughts as I’ve been out traveling this summer and plugging in with some different churches and ministry groups. I’ll you, what I’ve found in connecting with many of these ministries is that when it comes to doing digital ministry, we’re still very much event-focused. Often times, the event we’re focusing on is the livestreamed worship event. 

I’ve already done an episode on growing off of our worship service livestream… I’m not going back there today. Instead, I wanted to explore some similarities and distinctive traits of ministries that are growing in digital spaces. And I do this with a dawning realization that these traits aren’t merely useful for online or digital-only ministries. Rather, I believe that the church in all of its expressions could use to work with an awareness of these traits as we build faith communities of the future. These traits are reflective of the ways in which we facilitate relationships and build meaning in our digital age–which is an age that is not ending very soon.

So, again, we’re going to explore the traits and commonalities of flourishing digital ministries. But, yeah, it’s not just about digital ministry. It’s about the whole shape of the church.

And I’ll conclude this episode with a list of resources that help to shape my ongoing growth in digital ministry and my understanding of digital culture… 

As we get into it, let me offer that this session of Pastoring in the Digital Parish is presented by:

Safer Sanctuaries: Nurturing Trust within Faith Communities. Safer Sanctuaries is a new and comprehensive resource that continues the tradition of Safe Sanctuaries ministry by building on its trusted policies and procedures.

To learn more go to Safer Sanctuaries.org or call 800-972-0433.

I’ve got 6 common traits and practices that I’ve noticed in regards to flourishing digital communities. So let’s jump right into it, shall we?

Trait one is that their digital content provides authoritative, user-focused information. This is information that goes beyond telling someone about the who/what/when/where of your church community. It’s content that is made with the goal of enlightening the user in mind. In short, it’s content that is valuable for the information it provides the user.

In my day job, I oversee the TikTok channel for the United Methodist denomination. We generally rotate between a few different types of content on that channel. There are the repurposed informational videos–which often provide a story about an interesting ministry happening in the denomination. Then there are prayer and devotional videos. We also have many short quote videos featuring a smart-alecky John Wesley bobblehead statuette. And then we have videos detailing United Methodist beliefs.

Far and away, our most watched videos are those beliefs videos. 

Part of the reason for this is simply because this is the kind of content TikTok users expect the United Methodist denomination to provide. Let’s face it, they don’t expect the Bobblehead Wesley videos. They do expect us to provide info about what makes us distinctly United Methodist.

So this is useful information for the user. Because they’re seeking out our channel because they’re curious about United Methodist beliefs OR because they are United Methodists who want to have their theological positions confirmed in some way.

And that brings us to important note: The information about beliefs is what people expect for us to provide in that space. What kind of information might users expect you and your ministry to provide on your various digital platforms?

I’m going to mention some digital ministry leaders and some content creators throughout this episode. I don’t always agree theologically with all of these leaders. I do find that they create content and connections that are meaningful for people and they provide examples that we all can learn from.

Ascension Presents is a digital imprint of Ascension Press. Ascension Presents started a YouTube channel many years ago. The channel has over 800K subscribers. The videos they make get thousands to hundreds of thousands of views. They’ve launched chart-topping podcasts out of this channel. 

And I think the impetus for their success in building this platform was that the topics of their videos were onpoint. It definitely was not the production value–because the videos are pretty low-production. The presenters are charismatic… and that helps. But the presenters are not over-the-top personalities. They are not comedians nor are they raging ranters.

Rather, the topics their videos address are the true stars of Ascensions’ content. Here are some of their most watched video titles:

“Why be catholic and not just Christian?”

“Pray with us: the holy Rosary”

“What does the Catholic church teach about gender identity?”

“Do all good people go to heaven?”

“How do demons actually work?”

How about this one: “Can I smoke marijuana?”

Now, I’m not a Catholic… BUT, those are some compelling topics. In fact, that’s how Ascension Presents first pulled me in. I’m not in their target audience, but I’m curious about the topics they are presenting in clear and concise little videos.

Their videos make it very easy for me to get to know the Catholic Church. So when we’re talking about useful information for our users, this is one thing to consider: does it make it easy for us to be known?

Sermon videos and podcasts are kind of the base level of this kind of content. Sermons articulate our values. They, hopefully, provide something useful for the listener. Also, hopefully, they address a topic that answers questions the user asks. 

The other portion of the useful content equation involves producing content that reveals to the user something about themselves. Oftentimes for us, this comes up in answer to a question: “Do I agree with is this point of view or not?” People are seeking out this content in earnest are looking to interact or wrestle with their beliefs a bit. So the theological point of view is valuable to them.

All this to say, the content that groups like Ascension produce is very user-focused. It’s more about connecting with and informing the user than it is about broadcasting something about the organization. In a Venn diagram of these two types of content: user-focused and producer-focused, there’s likely to be a lot of overlap. The call of the church of the future is to be intentional about the area of overlap. Because the digital world is fical space and if users don’t find what they want from you, they’re just going to click on to someone who does provide what they want.

There you go, trait one is authoritative, user-focused content.

Trait 2 is this: The ministries platformed for the future by making connections online do pastoral care in digital spaces.

Let’s start here with a definition of pastoral care: and here I’m going to hone in on a definition I was offered in seminary. Pastoral care is pointing out the presence of grace, or the presence of Jesus, in a situation. So pastoral care becomes the shepherding act of nurturing others in the presence of grace.

Something I find fascinating about Ascension’s videos is that they often feel pastoral. I think this relates to presentational style. Ascensions presenters often use the second person voice, addressing the viewer as “you”. It’s conversational in this case. So voice helps. So does the fact that the presenter addresses the camera directly. It connects personally. So those are a couple ways of personalizing a presentational video. 

And, again, content matters here, too. Ascension’s videos are direct about saying “we want to help you be a committed Catholic.” There’s a shepherding directive there.

We’ve had a number of guest profs on this podcast who engage in pastoral in similar ways. If you remember Bradley Laurvick, he hosted the You Matter Zone through the bradandpuppets channel on TikTok. The channel was all about the presence of grace and Pastor Brad creatively used puppets to keep viewers moored in a state of grace.

More recently, we talked with Rev. Brandan Robertson, who also uses TikTok to offer videos of encouragement and support to a population of people who feel disconnected from grace. Though these are often broadcast videos, they still shepherd hurting people towards connection in healing. 

And there are certainly more ways to offer this shepherding than videos. Some ministers use specialized discussion boards on Discord. Our friend Shane Russo recently launched GoBe.Church. The Discord server there has special sections for parenting support and healing ministry. 

Anne Bosarge does daily prayer and, as we learned, often empowers users to pray for one another. There, the whole community is beginning to engage in pastoral care.

Some pastors have begun offering online office hours. ONe way to do this is to use a scheduling app and invite people to a time to jump on a call/huddle/Zoom with you. Rev. David Petty from CrossFire Faith and Gaming utilizes this kind of scheduling.

I’ve noticed a curious thing in my forays into Meta/VR space. The event-focused ministries I’ve participated in have been a little bit hit or miss in terms of participation. Where I’ve seen leaders have some sustained success is when they adopt of mindset of pastoral presence. So these leaders aren’t creating specific events for doing ministry. They’re showing up in VR spaces and doing ministry. I haven’t witnessed first hand what this looks like. But in the anecdotes I’ve overheard it sounds like they’re offering pastoral support and prayer to VR users who have expressed a willingness to talk with them. It’s being a pastoral presence in the space they are in.

We’ve moved into an age when people meet with doctors online. They do therapy online. We’re going to need to keep identifying ways to engage in pastoral counseling and care online.

Trait 3 of thriving online spiritual communities is this: they’re not for everyone. Actually, that’s not true. They are generally open to anyone. BUT, they often exist for a specific community or population of people.

We’ve talked with a lot of gaming-related ministry leaders: Jate Earhart, CrossFire guys, Methodist Gaming, Checkpoint Church, Lux Digital Church… These are all digital ministries who have existed for years. Their longevity sprouts out of intentionality. They are intentional about the people with whom they are trying to build relationships. In this case, it’s online gamers.

Our go-to example for this episode, Ascension, is upfront that their audience is Catholics. 

Brandan Robertson notes that his target connection is with people who are disaffected or estranged from church community.

Everybody who we’ve talked with who is working at building community can definitively say they have a target in mind. The more specific our targets are, the more likely we are to hit them. 

In the publishing world, they say your target audience description should not include the words “any one”. That often defaults to an audience of no one. 

Our online communities might just operate on the same principle. We have to be specific.

Now, I get why this feels uncomfortable to many of us. It feels uncomfortable to me. The church at large is sometimes thought of as being exclusive. I don’t want to feed that narrative. Church should not be exclusive.

But there’s a difference between exclusive and specific. And often in church we miss that difference. We can be specific without being exclusive. 

David Spinks is the author of The Business of Belonging and cofounder of CMX. He does a lot of work in community marketing. 

He wrote a post about focusing on practice over purpose. And he offered as an example climate change communities. Climate change communities often flop. It’s not because people don’t care about climate change. It’s just that once they join these communities they don’t know what to talk about. The communities are high on purpose, but low on practice. I’ll bet a lot of our church communities feel the same way.

He has an exercise that helps define community practice… and I bring it up here because it actually helps define our specific targets in building online spiritual community.

He calls it finding your members’ turpentine. He instructs us to take 30 minutes to write down 25 questions you believe your members are going to ask. And he offers these jumping off questions for you: 

What do your members wake up and think about every day?

What are the little annoyances they have to deal with?

What are the raw materials of their work?

What details do they tend to obsess over?

What are the questions that ONLY your members would know to ask?

This practice roots your online in your users/members reality and it gives personality and vision to the people you hope to form relationships with.

I found it useful.

We’re going to move onto trait #4… but first…

Let me tell you about safety in community.

Safer Sanctuaries: Nurturing Trust within Faith Communities is a new and comprehensive resource that continues the tradition of Safe Sanctuaries ministry by building on the trusted policies and procedures that have guided churches over the past twenty-five years. This resource contains theological grounding for the work of abuse prevention, psychological insights about abuse and abuse prevention, basic guidelines for risk reduction, age-level specific guidance, and step-by-step instructions on how to develop, revise, update, and implement an abuse prevention plan in your church or organization. 

For Christians, resisting evil and doing justice are ways that we live and serve Jesus Christ. Safer Sanctuaries helps to do just that by framing this work as a life-giving, community enhancing, and proactive endeavor.  It enables communities to be empowered and flourish as they develop and implement policies and procedures that make everyone safer.

To learn more go to Safer Sanctuaries.org or call 800-972-0433.

Check them out and build a little more care and safety into your community–no matter where it meets!

OK, trait number four of thriving digital ministries: they are making leaders online.

A struggle we’ve heard across the church in this digital age relates to involving people who we meet in new spaces in the leadership of the church.

There are a bunch of reasons this is a struggle. One is that our systems of leadership might be a little dated. In my denominational tradition, we often locate all the work of leadership within formal meetings. Professionally, not many of us work that way anymore. I’m not sure we ever did. That’s just one assessment, though.

Another road block comes about because we have dissociation between where we meet people and where we actually involve them in leadership. An online congregant very well isn’t likely looking to engage in leadership in the analog church. They may not be concerned about trustees issues, for example.

Thriving online communities first engage users in online leadership roles. I’ve already mentioned how Anne Bosarge has empowered members of The Chapel Online to pray for one another. If you cruise through their Facebook group, you can see that in action.

Several leaders who use Discord have elevated people to leadership through moderator roles. They noticed that some individuals were participating in a lot of server discussion, they approached these users with an invitation to act as a moderator. You could do the same thing with a Facebook page or group–really any discussion forum.

You can also invite regular users into posting or supply duties. Let them help create posts for social media. Empower them as shepherds and creators.

This doesn’t mean people won’t become more immersed in the whole life of the church. But the analog is not the first place they’re looking to step up into leadership.

OK. Let’s talk about trait #5. I had a hard time expressing this one. It comes down to readily admitting who we are as organizations. So part of it is being authentic. Another part is being open about who we are and what our goals are.

I guess you could say that trait #5 is that thriving digital communities are who they are… and admit it.

Firstly, they’ve not throwing up false fronts or facades. The pictures they show online aren’t stock–they’re from the community.

This is the authentic portion. It might feel easy to… aspirationally … represent our ministries online and make them sound or feel a little more advanced or connected than they are. But people know. They can tell. And it feels disengaging when someone is being false–even if it’s well-intentioned falsity. 

But also, ministries that do well online make themselves easy to know. Users don’t have to work hard to figure out who they are dealing with. They also don’t have to work hard to figure out whether or not this is the right community for them or worth checking out.

Some ways to be authentic include:

Admit that there is a person behind your social media posts. Use that person’s name from time to time… especially when replying to comments. 

Have consistent branding. Branding is just a way for people to get comfortable with your ministry and to know what you represent. So keep on brand.

Don’t take it for granted that people know how to contact with you or meet with you. Is your website up to date? Are service times and contact info easy to find? If not, people are going to wander away.

Share stories. Who has benefitted from your ministry’s activities? Share those stories. What does this ministry mean to you? Share that story as well. The positive stories can snow ball. So once they come, grab onto those things and celebrate them. Also, it’s OK to admit it when you’ve missed the mark. Again, we want to remind our users that there are real people behind the ministry logos and thumbnail pictures.

Those are five tips or traits for flourishing digital ministries.

But wait! I have more.

There are a number or sites I look to for inspire and tactics… so I thought I could pass those along, as well.

(Again, I don’t always agree with the theology of these… but find the information valuable):

Rev. Jim Keat Digital Minister on YouTube– Jim is a past guest and does a lot helpful videos with practical tips 

Ascension Presents on YouTube –I’ve talked enough about them already

Disorganized.Religion on TikTok–This is the ministry of Sarah TevisTownes. Her content hits on the questions people are asking. She also did a YouTube series showing how she makes these videos… which is really helpful.

Hubspot Blog–Yeah, it’s about marketing. It’s also about digital trends, what activities people engage in digital spaces, how to be discoverable online and more. It’s helpful and fascinating.

Digivangelism blog–Sammy Kelly of Digivangelism was a past guest and the blog has some great practical ideas for churches to implement.

MyCom Church Marketing podcast–Dan Wunderlich and I have done crossover episodes and it’s because there’s a lot of crossover in our topics. MyCom provides some really helpful tips for church marketing… which, as we’ve learned and been reminded of, is the opening of a relationship.

Did I mention ResourceUMC? They are the sponsor of this podcast. And they have all kinds of blog articles and ideas for leaders in ministry.

TheChurch.digital blog–This blog hosts all kinds of thoughts about applying tech and digital developments to ministry.

David Spinks’ Substack–David does all kinds of work in digital community building. His 11 pillars of community are really good. Also, Building for Believers is a great post. There are so many more.

BUT, that’s I’ll I’m going to give you this time around. Because I’ve talked enough, and I’m ready to go and do. Hope you are too! I will see you online.

Thanks to Safer Sanctuaries for their ongoing support.

Safer Sanctuaries: Nurturing Trust within Faith Communities is a new and comprehensive resource that continues the tradition of Safe Sanctuaries ministry by building on its trusted policies and procedures. This resource contains theological grounding for the work of abuse prevention, basic guidelines for risk reduction, age-level specific guidance, and step-by-step instructions on how to develop, revise, update, and implement an abuse prevention plan.

If you want more ideas and tips for your digital ministry toolkit, then check out some more episodes of Pastoring in the Digital Parish.

I mentioned a bunch already… but let me lift up a couple more I may not have yet alluded to:

Digital Community building through play and games from June of 2023 would be a helpful follow up as it recounts a couple stories of building online communities.

Also, Digital Parish, Real Community from May of 2023 talks quite a bit about peoples’ expectations for digital community. So it would be a good fit here, too.

If you want to connect with the Pastoring in the Digital Parish communityt: check out our Pastoring in the Digital Parish group on Facebook. You can also send me questions and ideas for future sessions at [email protected].

Again, I’m Ryan Dunn. I’d like to thank ResourceUMC.org,  the online destination for leaders throughout The United Methodist Church. They make this podcast possible. And of course, they host our website: pastoringinthedigitalparish.com, where you can find more online resources for ministry.

Another session comes next week. In the meantime: Peace!