I experienced the hybrid pattern of digital age connection not just in the tech industry, but in my theology studies. Theology and software might seem an unlikely pairing, given how many of my seminary classmates have gone into full-time church employment while few of my âday jobâ coworkers go to church at all! But I found my studies on mission development, ethics, justice, and servant leadership to complement the technology industryâs pace and style of innovation. I have found tech firms to be completely amenable to new ways of thinking, processing, and acting. The tech industry has a strong commitment to justice, diversity, and inclusionâtopics covered extensively in seminary. It didnât take long for me to discover that good theology, with its insistence on seeing people in their uniqueness and fullness, could offer a great deal to tech. Similarly, it didnât take long for me to realize that hybrid connections could offer a great deal to the Christian witness.
My seminary experience involved four years of consistent study and connection building in a hybrid setting. Those who go through seminary together typically become fast friends on the journey of religious leadership. I suspect seminary graduates have always thought of the relationships formed through those years as one of the most significant aspects of the experience. Like generations before me, I consider the relationships I formed central to my seminary work. However, my experience differed from earlier seminariansâ in one significant way. Aside from a few freezing weeks each year in St. Paul, Minnesota, all of my interaction with classmates was on internet forums, Google Hangouts, and Facebook.
Still, each time we gathered on campus, whether for intensive courses or for commencement ceremonies, I was struck by the depth of our friendships. Iâve seen online seminary cohorts practically become second families. From regular social media discussions on seminary-specific Facebook pages, to dinner outings during on-campus intensives, to shared celebrations upon graduation and, for some, ordination, my seminary classmates and I built unshakeable connections. And this makes senseânot many people are going through these programs, which are quite academically rigorous and spiritually demanding. We need to lean on one another for support. The strength and vitality of online student networksâin addition to the face-to-face networks enjoyed by earlier generations of seminariansâprovides the support one needs to see it through.
Christian seminaries are leading the way in thinking about what it means to be the church in this culture of hybrid connection. âEverything today is a hybrid event,â says Sarah Stonesifer Boylan of Virginia Theological Seminary. Stonesifer, Manager of Operations and Digital Missioner, runs trainings, workshops, and meetups for Christian leaders that explore what it means to connect constantly and meaningfully in digital culture. She says:
The church needs to find a way to live into hybrid space, where relationships are rarely exclusively online or exclusively offline. There are so many people in the church that donât want to engage the electronic format of connections. But the church is called to both. We canât just choose one or the other.
Stonesiferâs perspectives on the importance of hybrid connections and digital age religion are shared by scholars of new media and religion. âFaith in the offline world was about relationality and connection,â says Heidi Campbell, a Texas A&M professor of communications and a leading scholar of religion and new media. âItâs really no different in the digital age. Itâs still about relationships, itâs still about connecting, and itâs still about starting conversations.â
âSaint Paul used letters to connect people, I use posts on Facebook to do the same,â says Campbell. âCreating connections across distances through text across wide geographic distances has always been part of our story. The way the text is created and read has changed. But connection is as important as ever.â
Though hybrid connection is an increasingly common cultural experience, many church leaders still assume that Christian communities ought to exist primarily offline. Whether the perception is fair, the church seems to be focused on the connections that form during one hour per week in a face-to-face setting, typically on a Sunday morning. Itâs unsurprising that church leaders prefer face-to-face encounters, given that such encounters often facilitate meaningful connection. Why venture online, they might ask, when churches are so effective and efficient at creating connections from face-to-face encounters?
Sociological data on churchgoing adults indicate that leaders who prefer to nurture offline connection are at least partially justified in that choice. In Bowling Alone (2000), a classic study on American social capital, sociologist Robert Putnam observes that those who regularly attend church services are more likely to donate to charity, volunteer in their community, and engage in other types of activities that build social capital. Spending just an hour or two a week at church has been consistently correlated with engaging in the community and practicing altruism, a finding that has held throughout American religious history.
Walking into the typical American church, itâs not difficult to see why. One is likely to see the walls plastered with sign-up sheets and information on upcoming events. One will see bulletin boards adorned with committee reports, framed photos celebrating past in-person events, updates on fundraising drives for clothes closets or food pantries, and signs welcoming church visitors.
At church, strong social capital emerges from a small investment of time. Thirty-six percent of American adults attend church weekly. This means that one-third of Americans invest one hour per week in the church. Whatâs most remarkable about Putnamâs data is not that the religiously connected exhibit more consistent prosocial behavior. Itâs that the prosocial behavior is correlated with so l...
