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Is the Smartphone Killing Weekend Church Services?

It’s also the conversation we’ve been having at Connexus Church where I serve.

Some great questions for any church leader to ask include:

What makes the gathering of the church unique?

Why do we gather anyway?

Are there aspects of our gathering that you simply can’t download?

Will technology eventually kill the weekend service?

Those are questions we’re all better off answering sooner than later.

The Internet is not going away any time soon, and church leaders who ignore it do so to their peril.

For sure, as Will Mancini discusses below, the conversation should just not be about running defense—ignoring the Internet and trends and arguing the only faithful response is to attend.

You can listen to Will’s insights on the player below or go straight to iTunes to listen to my conversation with him (it’s Episode 23).

But with that in mind, the question remains, what do we do with our online presence and our gatherings?

Toward Downloadable and Non-Downloadable Experiences

For starters, I believe the church will always gather. (I outlined that among 10 predictions for the future church).

We always have and we always will.

Perhaps the best strategy is to increase your online presence as much as you can while deepening your in-person gatherings.

We need downloadable experiences AND we need non-downloadable experiences. It’s both/and, not either/or.

A greater online presence allows your ministry to impact people every day through social media, online messages and more.

Given that virtually every unchurched person in your city is online, it provides a portal to the unchurched in your community few could have imagined a generation ago.

In other words, something leaders could only dream of two decades ago is at your fingertips (literally), and it’s not even that expensive.

So the upside for online impact is staggering.

But that doesn’t make the church entirely virtual or downloadable.

Is there something that happens when the church gathers that doesn’t happen when you listen to a message when you’re at the gym or in the car?

For sure there is.

Five Things You Can’t Download

The times we’re in will make us drill down further on what elements of our life together are unique to physical gathering and which aren’t.

As we all intuitively know, there are some things you can’t download.

Leaders who understand and focus on these ingredients will always lead better churches than leaders who don’t, no matter how robust their online ministry might be.

So while this is early thinking (the dialogue will only get better with time), here are five ingredients I don’t think you can download.

I conclude each point with a leadership question that can serve as a filter or guide as you plan your services, gatherings and experiences.