The Holy and the Hybrid: Navigating the Church's Digital Reformation

by Ryan M Panzer

The digital reformation accelerated Friday, March 13, 2020, when the President declared a national emergency due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Church leaders quickly cobbled together virtual worship services, assuming faith communities would be apart for only a few weeks. As weeks stretched into months, however, leaders began to acknowledge that there was no going back to a previous normal, to a time of mostly in-person faith communities. In The Holy and the Navigating the Church's Digital Reformation , Ryan M. Panzer helps church leaders develop hybrid ministries through aligning the shared mission of the church with the collective values of our tech-shaped culture. The goal of the book is to help build communities that serve as the hands and feet of Christ simultaneously online and offline. Church will be at its best, Panzer argues, when we begin our conversations on technology not with apps or IT infrastructure but with values. The more we embrace the value of collaboration in particular, the more missional our faith communities will become and the more effectively we will equip communities for faithful service. "We take up this work," says Panzer, "not for the sake of relevance or trendiness but for the sake of the gospel, not to promote institutional vitality but to form disciples." With his guidance, church leaders will feel confident coaching their communities through this time of great change.

149 pages, Paperback

Published September 27, 2022

Reviews

[Ryan Panzer]

I might be biased. But this author makes some decent points.

[Zak Schmoll]

This book poses some very interesting questions about what our churches will look like in the future and how the analog and digital will interface going forward. I do not always agree with the author's conclusions and his optimism towards the parity that can be achieved between in person and online interactions. All that being said, the questions he is asking are the right questions because our world becomes more and more digital. Even after the pandemic, most of us still have the technological tools in place that we utilized when digital was all that we did, so now that we have some infrastructure, how should we utilize that in our mission to share the gospel? You don't have to agree with the author for this to be valuable, and I recommend thinking about these issues.