Photo by Nicholas Green on Unsplash
The following was a previous blog post. However, with some alterations, I am publishing it on Substack because it speaks to a central tenet of our ministry’s use of technology.
Someone once joked that the thing about nature is that there is so much of it. The same can now be said about cybertechnology that unites the world not seen since mankind gathered at the Tower of Babel.
The global pandemic of 2020 caused the church to rapidly adopt communication technology as congregations closed. The church needs to use technology smartly but also wisely.
We have discovered that for all the advantages of the internet, there remains a dark side. It is sadly easy to recognize the seediness of certain websites and online communities. What has been more difficult to discern till now is the destruction that online technology can cause to human relationships.
The world is waking up to that fact as we discover the addictive nature of the dopamine hits that come as we strive for online likes or friends and as we peddle the influence that comes with followers. We sit together but stare at our phones, flicking from screen to screen and thumbing our way through texts. The more followers, the more influence one wields.
We are starting to see the harm it can cause youth whose lives can be crushed by a single unwise Tweet or online post. We can see the damage it causes when teens are ghosted by supposed friends. We see rising rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide.
Technology, particularly the internet, is a proverbial double-edged sword. For all its detriments, it has positive communication benefits that allow for unprecedented collaboration across time and space.
The church doe not need to shun the technology but needs to use it both smartly and wisely. That means we need to be discriminating in the platforms we use and how we use them.
We must also make sure that we use the internet wisely to augment in-person ministry and not allow technology to become the ministry's main focus. We are not an online church. We are the church.
Interestingly, I learned these nuggets of wisdom from an unexpected place—a German language teaching platform—Easy German.
Nuggets of wisdom from the Germans
Sometimes wisdom comes from unexpected places. Those of you who know me also know that I tend to be awake in the middle of the night or early hours of the morning. Years ago, I would spend that time DXing across the shortwave bands listening to Radio Moscow, and trying to figure out what would be in the news before the New York Times or Washington Post hit the streets.
The internet changed that shortwave radio hobby. It changed how we communicate worldwide.
Now I listen to podcasts and YouTube educational instruction videos ranging from NancyPi’s tutorials on solving calculus differential equations to the Crazy Russian Hacker’s mind-numbing life-hacks. What can I say? I don’t always sleep through the night.
That brings me to the Germans— or rather, to “Easy German,” with Cari, Janusz, and Manuel— my effervescent, German Patreon-platform language tutors. Do you wonder why I don’t sleep?
I watch each of these middle-of-the-night distractions for different reasons. NancyPi speaks to my frustrated inner mathematician who could never crack the symbolic code needed to “Follow the science.” No one, except for a chosen few, is capable of following the science. The rest of us follow someone’s interpretation of the science. Let’s be honest.
The Crazy Russian Hacker is just plain hysterical. I don’t know if it is the affectation of his highly polished Cold War accent or the ridiculous life hacks he presents, but after only one video, I was as hooked.
Easy German is a different story and one that has led to this article. Yes, I engage this platform to sharpen my feeble German language skills, but unexpectedly, I am learning what might work best for the Wisdom of Old “Soles” web platform.
WEB PLATFORM VERSUS WEBSITE
It is essential to note that, unlike YouTube instructional videos, Easy German is more of a “web platform” than a website—much like Wisdom of Old “Soles.”
The Easy German folks teach language skills with an approach more like mentoring than classroom instruction. They teach it with online community interaction—people talking to people that augments the video lessons.
People interacting with people is a more effective way of engaging the curriculum and learning. Easy German has created an effective interactive environment to mentor people in learning the German language and understanding German culture.
Add it all up, and it’s more of an interactive learning platform than just a website.
That’s also the kind of platform are building to mentor the next generations of leader-believers. We don’t want to teach AT them. We want to EQUIP them. It’s also a lot harder to accomplish. To do that effectively, we need to have an environment where people communicate with people.
ALL MINISTRY IS LOCAL IN ORIGIN
We must remember our first core principle to understand why and how we need to build a robust web platform, not just a website. I’ve already published (and will post again) these five core principles. The first is that “all ministry is local in origin.”
That means we are not building an internet ministry disassociated from people meeting together in time and space. Virtual school did not work for our children. Neither does it work for the church. We are real people with real bodies created to interact in real space and time. Online tools and communities can augment in-person relationships but must not replace them.
The practical outworking of this principle is that the web platform must meet the needs of the people who already meet offline in Clusters (or “believing communities” or “congregations”). Remember, these Clusters are church congregations, and as such, they make disciples and multiply.
We must build an online environment that mentors people, not just gives them information. Effective mentoring requires participation, not just communication. It involves trial and error with the ability to receive wisdom and counsel from others along the way.
The Wisdom of Old “Soles” platform not only contains Bible teaching, theology, and an “Ask Me Anything” section but also includes interactive communities of people engaging with others.
Our Discord APP platform becomes a type of router to direct people to other resources and people who can help mentor in ways we could never do—or do as well. [myWOS discord platform invitation]
Our website myWOS.net describes who we are, but our Discord web platform is our interactive community.
Discord is an interactive environment for mentoring. To run it effectively will require a lot of people to help oversee and engage with the communities, so we need to build the platform on what already exists locally among people we already know. That is why this principle is so important. All ministry is local in origin. We build to those we have.
The ministry may be local “in origin,” but it grows in an online environment. It never loses its local roots. As local ministries multiply, the online components multiply as well. Networks of local ministries produce a platform of online resources.
Just think of it as replication on the cellular level. Rather than trying to create an entire body from the start, we’re just working on the cells, each of which carries the church’s whole DNA.
If we try to start big by creating a sprawling web platform—beginning with a body, not the cells—we are sure to create Frankenstein. It will become as uncontrollable as well. We are building an entire interactive platform to mentor people, but we are building that platform on people who already meet locally. The platform grows as the ministries grow.