Digital Communication, the

Church and Mission

By the CODEC Staff Team, St John’s
College, Durham
The Revd Dr Peter Phillips, Dr Bex Lewis,
the Revd Kate Bruce

Background
Email seems to have been with us since the days of Adam! Most of us will have become
accustomed to using it quite regularly in our day to day business, through keeping in touch
with distant family, or dealing with incessant spam! According to the Oxford Internet
Survey of 2011, up to 36% of us may now be accessing work email at home as well –
although I have a suspicion the figure is actually a lot higher if home emails were included
as well. 1
Similarly, text messaging, once the preserve of teenagers clicking away in the corner, is
now a frequent pastime for the majority of people in the UK. The OxIS 2011 survey found
that 89% of respondents regularly send text messages on a mobile phone. Indeed, the
latest figures from the United States estimate that US teenagers send an average of 3390
texts per month, over 100 a day, over ten per waking hour! In his report on the
Communications Market in July 2012, James Thickett, OfCom’s Director of Research,
made the following comment: 2
'Our research reveals that in just a few short years, new technology has fundamentally changed
the way that we communicate. Talking face to face or on the phone are no longer the most
common ways for us to interact with each other.
'In their place, newer forms of communications are emerging which don't require us to talk to
each other especially among younger age groups. This trend is set to continue as technology
advances and we move further into the digital age.'
That description of young people engaging through text and social media will ring true to
anyone with teenagers or who engages with teenagers. But the suggestion that visually-
limited online communication is replacing face to face conversation is a worrying
suggestion. Humans communicate, as we all know, far more by expression and body
language than by the words they use.
Engagement with the web, surfing and purchasing over the Internet, is also increasingly
common. In the OxIS 2011 survey, the four most popular activities were all consumer-
related: buying online, price comparison, travel reservations and internet banking. Internet

1
http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/oxis/publications
2
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/market-data-research/market-data/communications-market-
reports/cmr12/?a=0

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sales have boomed over recent Christmas shopping seasons and the online economy is
now fast outstripping the offline with highly publicised and damaging effects on
independent booksellers and high street retailers – the OXIS report showed that 86% of
respondents bought products online.
But it’s not just consuming goods, we also consume information – from TV guides to
Wikipedia, from reviews to politics, from bird-watching to churchgoing. The worldwide
web has opened up a whole universe of new information. Often, we consume on multiple
levels with electronic devices and smart TVs now allowing consumers to engage in double
screen viewing (social media and TV or second screen digital information about what is on
the primary screen) or to ‘Turf’ (to watch TV and surf the web at the same time).
Even if these aspects of digital media are increasingly common to people in the UK, there
are other aspects probably less familiar: blogging, micro-blogging, Facebook, Twitter,
Pinterest, Snapchat (the latest craze as this article was being edited) and Skyping (video-
calling on programmes such as Skype and Facetime). But most aspects of social media and
digital communication are increasingly known throughout society at all levels and all life-
stages. Indeed, alongside talk of the increasing numbers of ‘silver surfers’, there are
suggestions that the recent surge in the sales of tablet computers and the ‘ipad mini’ is
fuelled to a large extent by grandparents finding the ideal device to have a face to face chat
with the rest of their absent family.
Digital Communication is all this and more.
Digital Communication is the way we use computers and other electronic devices to
send digital messages to one another.
Even as I type that sentence on the keyboard, I have to go back and check it – it sounds so
archaic. How can that sentence cover all the various media of digital communication I have
outlined above? Well, in much the same way that print/paper media was multifaceted as
well. We are all aware of the many ways in which we communicate to one another in the
old forms of print/paper – through letters sent in the post, duplicated notice sheets,
newspapers which you could then re-use in the chip-shop, notes passed along the back of
the class. Those different media, formal and informal, have counterparts in the world of
electronic or digital media.
Moreover, digital media not only attempts to embrace all that print and paper media could
do, but also takes over from other telecommunications media – from the phone, the radio
and the TV. In other words, because all of these can be absorbed into digital media in
some way or other, digital communications becomes the principal medium for
communication in the 21st century with digital radio, digital TV, digital newspapers, digital
letters (email), digital notes (Twitter), digital greetings cards, digital books, digital Bibles,
digital tools and digital offices.
Of course, print, paper and broadcast media still exist and will continue to exist, at least
for the time being. One thought for the future is that paper media will become a luxury or
prestige form of media. We can already see this in the increasing prestige which a hand-
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written letter can assume in contemporary society. Since such a letter is a rarity in
modern communication and takes so much more time than a quick email or Facebook
update, it bears much more of the writer’s persona and, perhaps even more importantly,
represents so much more of the writer’s time given over to communicating with the
recipient. Written letters therefore take on some of their old romantic attachment of
something special, something which marks out the depth of a relationship, a treasure.
It is important to find the most appropriate way of conveying the message which we want
to deliver. A text message, a tweet, a Facebook post, a greeting card, a handwritten letter
– all of these represent different ways to convey different messages. But in the end
communication is communication and we should always find the best mode by which to
communicate the Good News about Jesus. As a recent tweet by Alan Charter from
Scripture Union (@dabdad) puts it:
Clay tablet ... scroll ... blackboard ... print ... pencil ... pictures ... comic ... video ... web.
Same Word ... changing medium #digichild
If it is true that digital communications has become the principal medium of
communication in the 21st century, what has this to do with the Church and with Mission?

Mission and Digital Media

There is something deeply incarnational about the digital age. At the beginning of
Hebrews, the author tells us: In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at
many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he
appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. You could almost
paraphrase that as: In the past God spoke to our ancestors through papyrus and paper in many
different and various ways, but in these last days, his Word is shown through the digital realm.
God is all about communication. John’s Gospel opens with the Word being present with
God and communicating with God. Immediately, that Word is associated with light and
life and creativity, the very hallmarks of the digital age, and is transmitted to the world,
enfleshed amongst us and we have seen his glory. That communicated Word, that
enfleshed Word, makes known God, exegetes God to all of us. A communicative God
incarnates himself within a specific culture and within a specific cultural mode of
communication. Jesus speaks the language of the people; born in first-century Roman-
occupied Palestine, Jesus engages in parables and storytelling which reflect that culture; he
performs miracles with the mud and the bread and the wine of the real world; he heals
real lepers and liberates those in real bondage.
Mission therefore starts with the world in which we find ourselves. It is incarnational or
contextual. 3 Our use of media needs to reflect not the media of the past but the media of
the everyday. Just as Jesus used the messages of contemporary Palestine, the images of
the world around him at the time, the language forms of the present day, so too we must

3
Of course, the Church is well used to these notions through their use in Mission-Shaped Church Report
and in much contemporary missiology.
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also reflect the world around us in the timeless message which we, the Church, wish to
share with the world today.
We need both to do mission in the vernacular but also to mediatize in the
vernacular.
It’s important to note that such use needs to be both in consumption of media artefacts as
well as in the production of those artefacts. In other words, we are not only consumers
but prosumers – we consume media and produce media. We all do this everyday in the
process of communication which is as much about listening as it is speaking. Mission in a
digital age means not only understanding how to exist in the digital age, but also how to
read that digital age and to speak into that digital age – a properly passive and active
encounter – an interaction within the digital age – an incarnational presence seeking both
to be immersed in a culture but also to become a radical change agent within that culture
too.
Nick Pollard and Steve Couch wrote a book some time ago called ‘Getting More Like
Jesus While Watching TV”. The book sought to encourage Christians to watch TV but to
adopt a number of good practices to help them ‘digest’ TV properly and not to be
helplessly turned into passive victims of TV culture. The key point is that we need to
ensure that we are aware of the world in which we live but not become totally conformed
to that world – a message taught by both Jesus and Paul – in the world, but not of the
world.
The digital age, and social media in general, should work well for the Church and prompt
an active adoption of digital communication as a prosumer – consuming but also seeking to
challenge and change what we are consuming – even perhaps creating content ourselves.
Digital communication requires listening and watching, but also collaboration and
engagement. Its values include transparency, authenticity, and passion. It allows plenty of
space for persuasion and conviction, even for evangelising.
It is true of course that the Church is not yet completely digital. We sometimes prefer to
hark back to previous eras. For most of us, the digital age is still seen as something ‘new’
that is a bit of an add-on, or even something that is potentially irrelevant in a church
culture that prioritises the geographical. We are sometimes much more interested in
bums on pews than on hearts transformed. But because of the way that digital
communication transcends the geographical and the physical, transcends even the
limitations of time and presence, it can also be used to augment what the church is already
doing - to connect us all as part of a whole community. Much of Steve Fogg’s work has
been exploring this aspect of social media. 4
Whilst many of us would argue that Church is best seen in people gathered in fellowship
to worship God in liturgy and faithful service, digital communication can enhance the
presence of that fellowship into people's everyday lives through the week, rather than

4
http://www.stevefogg.com/2013/05/09/church-social-media-england/

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simply a broadcast (or more often narrowcast) message on a Sunday. What about the
possibility of digital devices at church? What about tweeting the sermon to your twitter
followers or tweeting questions for discussion? What of putting those questions up on a
screen in church? We need to become more used to people taking notes on smartphones
rather than in notebooks and stop assuming the only thing you do with these powerful
handheld devices is send a text!
More than that, digital communication allows for communication with those we cannot
speak to already. It allows us to break out of the same old voices feeding into our worship.
We can have guest speakers from all over the world (using Skype, FaceTime or a whole
host of apps); we can invite the housebound to both enjoy and participate in our services
(through Twitter or Skype or Facebook); we can pray for those in need and let them
know we are praying for them wherever they are; we can text the notices; give our
offering; share good news all through digital media. There are more and more possibilities
for Bible Reading plans or Bible Studies from www.bigbible.org.uk and
https://www.youversion.com/en-GB and a host of other sites. What a gift God has given to
us.
For all its potential, however, those of us engaged in social media are increasingly asked:
“How do we do it?” Some of this questioning is a call for crosscultural training as the
Church realizes that it is embedded in the old days, in the old culture, and is seeking
retraining for mission in a new culture, in a new world. However, some of the questioning
represents confusion among congregations who have become more and more out of step
with their neighbours and colleagues.
The key thing to say is that the necessary cross cultural training requires no inoculations,
no needles and minimal pain! There are plenty of enthusiastic, wise and gentle people
(CODEC and Bex Lewis’s consultancy http://digital-fingerprint.co.uk amongst them)
offering excellent crosscultural training opportunities which consist of lots of fun and
creativity.
The key point is that we are much more likely to impact our neighbours and colleagues if
we are actually speaking their language and engaged in the same kind of cultural activities
as they are. There are many reasons for the use of traditional language in hymnody and
liturgy. However, it is unlikely that an evangelistic message in Elizabethan English or in
Latin will have a profound impact on the local community. However, engagement in the
digital, through facebook or other social media may be just the thing that opens up the
conversation lines between our Church communities and the wider communities within
our neighbourhoods.
Indeed, some would ask whether the Church can afford NOT to speak digitally, not to be
engaged in digital communication. If the Church did choose not to, she would be ignoring
one of the biggest communication spaces that exist, and so run the risk of becoming
simply irrelevant. The statistics show that there are literally billions of people online, for
several hours each day. We are called to engage with the world, to be salt and light in it,
to pass on the good news - how can we miss out on opportunities to engage with those
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people. In one of his last pieces of communication before he ‘retired’, Pope Benedict XVI
put it this way:
‘The digital environment is not a parallel or purely virtual world, but is part of the daily experience
of many people, especially the young. Social networks are the result of human interaction, but for
their part they also reshape the dynamics of communication which builds relationships: a
considered understanding of this environment is therefore a prerequisite for a significant presence
there’.
We need content that draws people into what we're doing by being ourselves rather than
throwing ‘evangelical’ messages out there. For example, posting some brief reflections on
Facebook about Sunday’s sermon, mixed in with the general stuff of life: gym exertions,
funny pictures, birthday messages, and humorous links. This mixture of digital engagement
shows that Christianity is part of our whole life (as The London Institute of Contemporary
Christianity (LICC) 5 would put it – whole life discipleship). Because our faith then
becomes an integral part of our whole lives, rather than one section which we push
aggressively, those who engage with us digitally are open to asking more questions about
it, to engage more with us, perhaps to join us in our reflections and journeying.
Being digitally engaged means we needs to be ourselves, be interesting, be relevant, and be
honest. If people come looking for that message and we're not online, what are they going
to find instead?
A Case Study
Facebook Ministry
“What would you ask Jesus if you met him face to face?” asked the leader of the Study Group? I
had no doubts “Will you be my Facebook friend?” came my instant reply and “Have you got a
web page?”
The room rang with laughter but I was serious. A few years ago some teenagers who were new
Christians had set me up on the computer networking site Facebook and since then I’d never
chatted regularly to so many ‘friends’.
Five years ago I was stationed as a Methodist Minister to a rural market town with five
surrounding villages in East Yorkshire. The congregation was about twenty strong and comprised,
with one exception, of retired and elderly people. There was a vision though of things being
different and renovations were taking place to the church building as I moved to the area. The
church was massively in debt so I’d been asked to work quickly using my expertise in church
growth. A great deal of listening to the needs of the community and responding to them took
place and, as relationships began to form, the church congregation began to grow. At the time of
writing the regular Sunday congregation has more than tripled and at times reaches over 100
with at least a third of the worshippers being under thirty years of age.

5
http://www.licc.org.uk/

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I noticed that most of the young parents and the teenagers used Facebook continually throughout
their day to day lives and when they discovered I’d joined the site they asked to become my
Facebook friends.
Part of the initial church vision was to hold a monthly upbeat Sunday service with a music band so
the first event to be advertised through Facebook was that one. However, it became apparent
very early on that I’d have to ‘walk the walk and talk the talk’ to be effective. So the
advertisement on Facebook on Saturday would read something like ‘Resident Rev and Band’
Sunday 10.30am at St J’s – who’s in the house?’ There would be lots of ‘likes’ and it was
noticeable that most of the under 30’s came to the service. I decided to expand the ministry. Our
local Boys Brigade, which grew to over 70 in number created their own site as did the newly
formed Youth Café and both, provided a useful ‘wall’ for evangelism advertising not only Sunday
services but Film Night and the like too.
I have received numerous requests for Baptisms of little ones through parents contacting me on
Facebook and several of these have resulted in adult Baptisms and even Church membership. The
church also launched an exciting web page and Facebook Friends were introduced to it.
I embarked on some post grad study at Cliff College and together with another student created
Cyber Church as a Facebook Group. This was highly successful and it seemed that the young
people were asking ‘all the faith questions they’d always wanted to ask, but never dared’. Cyber
church on Facebook seemed to evolve as a non threatening means of communication. We would
hold Cyber Church prayer times and these were very popular.
The next stage of the ministry became that of a pastoral nature. One day a young mum was
distressed because she had taken her baby to the playground with her toddler and the baby
wouldn’t stop crying. Some youngsters who were hanging out there had begun to shout abuse, so,
in her distress she’d told her story on Facebook. I picked it up and could visit the mum within the
hour to console her. Through that incident I recognised that Facebook could provide an excellent
and instant pastoral care tool and I began to build on the pastoral ministry using the social
networking site, often using the facility of ‘chat’ to ensure better confidentiality.
I recently carried out some research with twelve of the young people for my Ministerial
Development Review as to the effectiveness of Facebook in ministry. One question was ‘Does
being a friend of Revd Sue’s on Facebook deepen your interest in church?” All the young people
said ‘Yes’. They also were unanimous in that if they had a problem they would first make contact
by Facebook but then follow it up with a face to face meeting.
Interestingly in Wired Magazine in 2010 Mark Zuckerberg the founder of Facebook wrote ‘ The
thing I really care about is mission, making the world open’. As a Christian missioner and
evangelist I agree entirely with Zuckerberg and propose that Facebook is an essential tool in our
post modern society and certainly one that St Paul and Jesus himself would have considered using
in ministry had it been available at the time.
(Revd Sue Pegg MA, May 2013)

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Discipleship and Digital Media
As part of the BigBible Project, CODEC has developed a crowd of digidisciples. Part of
the rationale for this is to remind those engaged in social media and digital communication
that they need to be a disciple of Christ both offline AND online. We use the following
definition of discipleship: A disciple is one who, by following Jesus, grows in their faith in Christ
and in so doing models and teaches the precepts of … Christian living, service, and worship. A
digidisciple is called to be a Christian in every aspect of their lives and to model their
Christian living in every aspect of the life both online and offline.
We argue that all people have something to contribute to our work of growing
discipleship – “from a digital Christian or a digital explorer, whether you’re a newbie or an
old hat, a rookie or a bishop, we all have something to contribute to the digital space:
• As Christians we live 24/7 for God, in whatever spaces we live in or engage with
(see LICC for more on this 6).
• There is no such thing as ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ worlds: only online and offline
space/cultures – the connection between the two is different for each individual.
• We need to take seriously our Christian presence both online and offline. Are we
the same person, living by the same values in both ‘spaces’?
A ‘digital disciple’, or, as we are call it, a #digidisciple is someone who seeks to live out
their Biblically-informed Christian faith in the digital space, whether they are dipping a toe
in or are fully immersed in the digital worlds …and, yes, there are lots of different digital
worlds, including some more well known ones: Facebook, Twitter, blogging, Second Life,
the increasingly mobile and interactive nature of the digital space.
Of course, digidiscipleship doesn’t have to be limited to blogging on a website. How do we
present discipleship in a digital world?
The web gives us so many opportunities:
• Engaging in conferences online to develop our own discipleship
• Housegroups through social media or Skype breaking down geographical or
physical limitations, encouraging the housebound or house-locked to share their
gifts regardless of their and our limitations
• Prayer meetings across the miles
• Worship either through broadcast media or through online services delivered
through Facebook or Twitter or on special platforms such as St Pixels.
• Online training courses and discipleship resources

6
http://www.licc.org.uk/

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 • Online retreats through such centres as http://www.ibenedictines.org/

The Church and Digital Media

Of course, the whole point of communication is to develop community. Although
Descartes would have us believe that early humans wanted to persuade one another that
they could think properly (cogito ergo sum, “I think therefore I am”), it seems much more
likely that Gramsci is right - they invited the neighbours around for a party (convivo ergo
sum, “I have a party therefore I am!”). That seems to have been a truism which Jesus
himself understood. He was nicknamed a glutton and drunkard (Matt 11:19) – not because
he ate and drank too much, but because he seems to have known the importance of
coming together and spending time with people around the common table. Modern New
Testament scholars have talked about it in terms of ‘open commensality’.
Similarly contemporary social theorists are raving about the importance of community and
fellowship: Richard Sennett in sociology, Alain de Botton in the study of the religious
aspects of Atheism, Clay Shirky in the world of business, Charles Leadbetter and Seth
Godin in leadership theory. Community, social cohesion and the power of belonging are
the common vocabulary of contemporary thought. And Christianity has community at its
very heart – we all know that discipleship is as much about belonging as much as about
believing or behaving.
The role of digital communication and social media is important here. A few years ago the
Vatican held a huge conference on the use of the Internet. One of the Cardinals in charge
argued that the Church had to stop merely replicating on the web what it already did on
paper. The web was not for doing marketing or listing services or even singing from the
same hymnsheets. The web was for creating community. The new web was a place for
websearchers to move from being readers of content to become members of a
community; to move from passive absorbers to active contributors.
Social media is not just a place to broadcast marketing messages: social media is a place to
be social. That’s a crucial point to make about digital communication. On the one hand,
Christianity wants to declare the truth. It wants to get out a message. Therefore, we will
use the web as a place to be declarative. We will want to display who we are and what we
do and the message which we preach. However, such a display does not operate as social
media. It simply tells people that if they want to become one of us, this is the way they
need to act, dress, speak. It is talking at people rather than listening to them – creating
clones and not disciples.
It’s true that when we make use of social media we need to be careful. Words put online
can be just as defamatory, just as open to criticism as those offline. The law of the land
applies to both. However, as Christians, we will want to be as Christian online as we are
offline – to be disciples in every aspect of our lives. As such, it is more than just obeying a
law. Many companies, organisations and churches will have specific guidelines for the use

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of social media. 7 These social media guidelines usually suggest acting online just as you
would expect to behave offline – to be courteous, civilized, polite, non-aggressive and
responsible. The problem comes when the shorter and less personal a form of
communication becomes, the more care needs to be taken to ensure that that
communication is as clearly understood as possible. We all know that emails, tweets,
Facebook updates are very prone to misunderstanding. Moreover, there are problems of
online fraud, online bullying and online exploitation. We need to be as gentle as doves
online, but also as wise as serpents.
But what an opportunity social media offers to us. An opportunity to connect and engage
with the world. To hear those voices which have often been silenced. To bring voices
from far flung shores to us without the need for expensive travel. To see and hear the
treasures of bygone ages. To interact with people from all over the world. Many will have
witnessed the #IF campaign run by many of the UK’s charities attempting to influence the
G8 summit to act on global hunger. That campaign was enhanced and developed by the
use of social media. Indeed, so many social campaigns are embracing social media as a core
part of their communications strategy. It’s the way to speak to people and engage
communities.
Digital communication and social media invite us to create community; to draw out what
other people think. It will invite their stories into our community and represent multiple
opportunities to share different narratives. Digital communication invites response and
poses questions rather than declaring closed answers. The power of Alpha, and other
meal-based training courses, may be more in the open table than in the closed script. On
the Emmaus Road, Jesus was recognized in the breaking of bread rather than in the
exegesis of Scripture. That’s an intriguing lesson to learn when so much of the web and so
much of digital communication is about proclamation rather than reception.
Digital communication, then, is about developing community and opening up
communication channels. It is about finding opportunities for common purpose where
people can come and share with us and we with them. It’s about working together and
eating together and, perhaps, even worshipping together. It’s about breaking down
barriers between online and offline communities and seeking to share together. That’s the
difference between what some people called Web 1.0 – using the web as a digital
noticeboard – and Web 2.0 – using the web as an invitation to join the party. Perhaps the
difference these days is between a service held behind a locked glass door or a celebration
of messy church!

7
For example, The Church in Wales has published social media guidelines
(http://www.churchinwales.org.uk/press/display_press_release.php?prid=5140) as has the Methodist Church
(in two parts. Part One: http://www.methodist.org.uk/ministers-and-office-holders/technology-and-
church/social-media-guidelines). The Civil Service and the BBC have similar policies.
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June 2013