I love a good podcast. I’ve listened to them, hosted and produced them, critiqued them, used them for teaching, and listened with my children. Most of us have our favorites and we follow when new episodes will release.
Why does this matter for the practice of ministry?
Because we live in a time of digital connectivity. Digital connectivity, a term from digital theorist Douglas Rushkoff, refers to the ways in which internet resources and social media permeate both society and how persons relate to one another.
It seems like connectivity would be such a needed thing in a time of social distancing. This may be one reason we love podcasts. But what does “community” mean in a society shaped by this kind of connectivity? When it comes to digital devices, the experience can be like what Rushkoff calls “digiphrenia.” The perceived necessity to keep pace with the onslaught of information available creates a “tension between the faux present of digital bombardment and the true now of a coherently living human.”
If we didn’t believe this before #pandemicpastoring, we know it now.
We are (faithfully and rightly!) distanced from in-person gatherings. We have Zoom Church, virtual gatherings and podcasts. These are a gift. And. Even as we are grateful for the opportunities that digital resources offer, we can name that technology can be exhausting. We can wonder which best practices will nourish and sustain a flourishing ministry.
Digital connectivity is not an accessory to ministry but a thread that weaves throughout the lives of most congregants. Rushkoff suggests that the context of “present shock” in digital connectivity is incompatible with the ways most institutions operate. “The ease with which we can now draw lines of connectivity between people and things is matched only by our need to find patterns in a world with no enduring story lines.” The Church, however, claims both an enduring story line and an incarnate Christ.
And these days, we are doing so on a screen.
It feels shaky, at best. With one little square of someone’s face, we are supposed to feel present with our community? With voices recorded, we are supposed to trust the latest media platform to work correctly. With one touch of a button, voices mute. No choir processional, no offering plates, no paraments, no hugs. It feels like disembodied space, for a practice we have long recognized as embodied.
Not to mention the sense of chaos we feel. Creating moments that count as sacred takes work, filming, recording, editing, and producing in ways that feel canned. Then, as much as you may plan for people to consider one idea or experience, someone takes the Bible study discussion on a whole ‘nother rabbit trail.
Digital Church is a wild ride, y’all.
A few things that may tether us for the journey? Remembering what we learn from Christian educators about relationality, contextuality and complexity. Start with the screens, but reach beyond them.
Are you feeling a little nauseous with the digital connectivity? Consider a few guidelines for using podcasts and virtual experiences in your practice of ministry:
5 Guidelines for Using Digital Resources for Faithful Practices
- Allow image to shape pathways of imagination. The creation of podcasts can bring together images both familiar and unfamiliar to learners. Imagination can move a learner from familiar images to the risky work of transformation. How about beginning with images from worship and ministry settings that would be recognizable?
Familiar experiences bolster the encoding occurs in the learning experience. Begin with imagery that can be a placeholder in the mind of a learner leaves a space in which new activity can occur. Think about how images are building blocks of memory that served as “environmental cues” as people forge new understandings in their life of faith.
In one of my podcasts, the sensory strategy of using the song “One Voice” embodied the intersection of stories in a musical format. Ministers can design learning experiences that begin with imagery using a multitude of options. Playing a popular, even secular, song can invite learners to bring their experience of that song to an intersection of meaning with theological claims. A photograph from a magazine or a television commercial can provide the same kind of entry point for imagination, inviting the learn to start with what is known and allow that encoding to shape imagination. When designing a learning moment, educators can plan to use imagery and sensory experiences to guide learners towards imagination.
2. Invite complexity to address sensory conflict. As Dean Blevins explains, meaningful use of digital resources should prompt production rather than passive consumption. The vast presence of information in our current context of digital technology creates what Rushkoff calls “sensory conflict,” a feeling in which a fixed position can feel disorienting in the presence of motion. People can perceive sensory conflict as they attempt to engage stories, both scriptural, communal, and personal. As Rushkoff says, “The digital world on the other side of our computer screens tends to move out of sync with the ones in which our bodies reside.” Inviting an aspect of complexity challenges a learner to look out at their world and reorient their experience in line with the perceived speed at which they are moving. Complexity can be designed in many ways but should include an encounter with the mystery of God or some movement in their relationship with God. Consider the practice of testimony. When listeners do not wholly consume what is said by each voice, but engage the voices in points of agreement, disagreement and questions. Complexity also requires that learners respond in some way. How can we design a moment of response in our digital offerings?
Listen for voices in the learning moment. Consider what happens in the experience of developing and receiving testimony in the context of a faith community. I have found that testimony is a meaningful resource for exploring content with a group. When considering a resource to explore Scripture or theology, a minister might begin asking which voices are present in the moment of learning. Ponder the story of God in Scripture as a voice that enters into conversation with persons and with a community. Ask about its tone of voice and how the community will hear this voice in a particular dialect. Attend to the voice of learners, reflecting on the experiences they bring to the setting. Making space for the voices of each learner to be articulated may call a minister to change or omit their plans, but reshaping the learning moment that acknowledges personal stories can lead to evocative nurture.
Listening for the voice of the community brings the other stories into the authentic context in which theological claims can have life. A minister may ask: What are the traditions or assumptions present for this community? How can the intersection of stories bring this community’s practices into light, even revealing areas where confession and transformation is needed? How might this community be ignoring the realities that exist in the lives of their neighbors? Making space for multiple voices in learning may require modeling of how to experience encounter that calls us to responsibility. Listening to multiple voices in the creation of the podcast taught interpretation to the larger body of listeners, from the congregation and community.
3. Make choices for your particular context. There is not a perfect map of how to carry out a ministry moment with digital resources, new voices, and a faith community. Ministers must recognize and have confidence in the choices they make in designing a learning moment. Each choice is a deliberate turn that will guide learners in a particular direction. For example, the choice to say “neighbor” may be intentional because it makes a theological claim about the people we engage in ministry. The decision to name every participant in a podcast may call on recognition of the different generations, identities, and affiliations that are represented. Bold decision making is part of the minister’s task. Educators can indeed find a wealth of brilliant resources that require little preparation and can offer meaningful formation. Sometimes, however, a minister must recognize the particular needs of a community that require a uniquely designed resource and use creativity to weave the priestly and prophetic together. Ministers should trust their training and theological instincts to make well-informed choices that meet the needs of their particular context. In the words of my friend Jack Free: “Do right, fear not.”
4. Take risks as a minister. Shaping a podcast around the intersection of voices was a risk for me as an educator. Though I may have had a detailed plan for creating a podcast, the majority of content, besides Scripture, was extemporaneous. The vulnerability that testimony requires offered a beautiful intersection of voices that was worth the risk. The conversation among the community group introduced the experiences, biases, and interpretations of real congregants in a way that ventured into unscripted territory. If I had been seeking some sort of transmission of an outlined set of principles, I would have been fearful about what would occur in the learning moment. Instead, recognition of the transformative power of testimony invited me to set up learning moments that invited vulnerability.
Without resolution, the story did not end with the testimony but suggested a continuation, leaving space for the creative work of God, even in the story of this congregation. Ministers can experience the transformative effect of testimony by taking risks in the ways they introduce story sharing in their communities. One way to analyze the risk is to begin with listing the stories that need to be heard in a ministry context. A minister could ask what might happen in a “facing of the other” during this exchange of stories. Perhaps scriptures that call Christians to care for marginalized people need to intersect with a congregation who does not recognize that calling. Taking the risk of inviting those stories into faithful moments, through verbal story-sharing, imagery, or other means, makes a claim of trust that God can usher in a new creation through the encounter of voices.
5. Stir imagination to transform practices. Start with the images. Especially in podcasts and virtual gatherings. Recognize and discuss what images stand out to them in a story. Bring in images that matter to them. Consider how the practice of testimony involves using stories as a path to “departure from the agreed upon script.” The scripts that are present in our congregations can be stirred up with imagination. Testimony as a practice can enliven the spiritual imaginations of Christians. Invite imagination, and you may touch the whole life of the congregation — “touch liturgy and the works that serve justice quiver; touch prayer and community is strengthened; preach compassion and knowledge is strengthened.”
