But our Sunday gatherings have not only been based on community. Much like cable TV and traditional broadcasting, our model has been based on scarcity. In other words, we hold the means of production (the music, the message, the programming and the gathering space), and therefore you need to gather here at X hour to experience it. You can’t get it until we say you can.
Church in a box is an outdated strategy and the digital has very much become real.
Life now slips seamlessly between the digital and the analog. After all, you’re reading this on your phone or on your laptop (digital) and in the next five minutes you’ll make some real-world interaction, ordering coffee, talking to a colleague or family member in real life.
Digital slips into analog, analog then slips back into digital. We all live there.
So will the future church.
Most church models are still mostly anchored in the past—gather here at a set time and we can be the church. Miss it, and well, you miss it. But as more and more churches move seriously into online and social, that will change.
In the future, church attendance will be any time, anywhere, or sometimes.
Let me explain.
In the future, the church will meet anywhere, any time, sometimes. You’ll have set gatherings and people will gather together in person, but the digital will supplement, enhance, expand and sometimes replace your local gatherings.
For example, when people are out of town, they’ll join you online. But through email (yes, despised email…people read them every day), online church, social and more things we’ll invent, we can engage people daily in the mission. And we can reach people who haven’t been reached every single day, not just Sunday.
People may even choose to gather spontaneously on their own…meeting with friends and inviting new people. The expressions are as limited as you want them to be.
Even if your church doesn’t decide to invest in the Internet, nothing stops anyone in your church or community from following dozens of churches and church leaders who have. When it comes to technology, the toothpaste is out of the tube.
If only the church would live like this was an opportunity, not an obstacle, our mission could expand dramatically.
And yet most churches don’t even spend 5 percent of their budget on their online presence. How’s that working for you?
Online is not a threat to the local church. It’s fuel.
2. Consumers Are Leaving…And Won’t Be Back
Part of the tension we’re all feeling is that we live in a consumer-driven culture. While there’s been a backlash to materialism to some extent among Millennials, Generation Z appears to be embracing it with zeal (so far anyway). We’re not exactly in a post-consumer culture.
Add to that the fact that many churches have a consumer mindset (come to us…we’re the best/coolest/hippest/most orthodox/most whatever), the arrival of digital options means you no longer need to attend to consume.
