The Future is Not Guaranteed

I recently came across a very long, but very informative, report on “The Networked Congregation” by Andrea Useem.

Useem lays out a comprehensive, in-depth look at what the future of the wired Church-at-large will look like; the challenges and benefits of a Web 2.0 Christian church. If you have the time, I’d encourage you to check out the report in its entirety here.

Useem drops some knowledge on page 32 that I had to share with you. Read at your own risk, extreme excitement may follow:

While the need for face-to-face events is an obvious one, that fact alone does not guarantee that geographically based, brick-and-mortar religious congregations will continue to be the center of religious life. As a point of comparison, a very similar discussion is taking place right now in the newspaper  industry, where declining advertising revenues, circulation numbers, and share prices are threatening the existence even of large and successful newspapers. Journalists and newspaper lovers often say, in a protesting voice, “But there will always be a need for quality reporting.”

That observation is true, yet it alone is not enough to sustain an industry whose underpinnings have been washed away or at least very seriously eroded by online utilities. Quality reporting may endure in some form or another, but that does not guarantee newspapers will.

Similarly, religious people everywhere are drawn toward one another, and that impulse does not seem to have dimmed in any way. Indeed, Campbell estimated the people who belonged to the online communities she studied spent an average of twelve hours a week interacting with those communities, and at times some even drove up to twelve hours to meet with fellow community members in person at different times. But just because there remains a need for religious congregations does not mean the church on the corner will necessarily continue unchanged in the digital age.

How’s that for your Tuesday morning?

There are influential voices out there asking the question, “Does online community really count as true community?” With all due respect, this is the wrong question. The real question should be, “Online community is happening, so what are we going to do with this reality?”