Jared Stacy, the former pastor of Spotswood Baptist Church in Fredericksburg, VA, worked hard to serve the members of his congregation. His desire was to teach the Bible and encourage them to follow Jesus.

But his pastoral work was overturned by how his congregants were formed online.

As Stacy explains," “How could I compete, with an hour of a sermon on Sunday, with a person who was committing hours and hours to media and information on YouTube and Facebook?”

Consider the stakes. Remember, Christianity is a comprehensive religion. It tells us about God. It explains human identity, value, and purpose. It provides an ethical framework. It gives us an all-encompassing story about our origin, fall into sin, God’s redemption, and the rest of eternity.

So it takes a tremendou amount of time and effort to understand what it means to follow Jesus, to embrace God’s truth, and to apply it to every area of our lives. It’s an intensive effort that requires significant daily involvement of its practitioners. After all, the claim is that Jesus is Lord.

But as it turns out, conspiracy theories work the same way. Speaking of the QAnon theory, Stacy acknowledges, “This is about a wholesale view of reality — what is real, what is true.” And their advocates understand that online communities are an ideal environment to train their members to fully embrace their lies.

It turns out that the tension in Stacy’s story goes deeper. Because we’re all formed by what we read online.

In particular, Stacy noted that the younger members of his congregation were dialed into one stream of information and the older members were tied into another one. And consequently, “Those two streams of information divided families: Older members of the church were entertaining conspiracies, and younger members were pushing back.”

Despite his best efforts, the challenge of leading his church to follow Jesus was outmatched. Stacy couldn’t compete with the formative role of powerful online communities.

That’s not his fault.

But it is the context in which pastors now work.

We live in a social context where online communities are molding their participants more intensely and thoroughly than local churches.

Online communities can also have far greater influence than parents have with their kids or than children have with their parents.

Is this the whole picture? By no means. I’m not saying that online communities are the only place we are formed.

But I am observing that this is an increasingly dominant context for shaping who we are and what we do.

It’s a bleak perspective, but burying our heads in the sand won’t make it any better.

Sometimes I hear the response, ok, but that’s other people. They’re the crazy ones. But as for me and my tribe, we are connected to trustworthy, reliable sources of information online.

But let’s humble ourselves. The rabbit holes are all around us.

For instance, a study of how YouTube works found that “alt-lite” videos often served as a gateway to “alt-right” perspectives. By looking at 72 million comments, the researchers found that “More than 26% of people who commented on alt-lite videos tended to drift over to alt-right videos and subsequently comment there.” In the study, alt-right channels were defined by their advocacy for a white ethnostate, so this is a serious problem.

Even if you and your church are weathering the storm, your neighbors aren’t.

On average, people spend about 147 minutes a day on social media. People are online. A lot. And this intensive commitment is forming their identities, values, worldviews, and actions.

Christian, what online communities are shaping you? I know you invite people to join you at church. But what online communities do you participate in? Which of them could you invite a friend to join so they could experience spiritual growth?

Pastor, where do you want to invite people to build relationships, discuss content, and be transformed by their online activity?

In today’s world, if we’re going to disciple people to love Jesus and follow him, then the church needs to invest in building strong, healthy, engaging online communities.

What would this look like?

It seems to me that it would be wise for the community to adopt a statement of faith accepted by the global church - like Lausanne’s Cape Town Commitment. This would create a broad platform for brothers and sisters in Christ, from many denominations, to gather together and encourage one another. Even better, the Cape Town Commitment is framed in the language of love. So it teaches us not only how to accurately think about God, but also what it looks like to faithfully follow Jesus.

It would also be critical that the community have caring, trained moderators. Otherwise, whoever has the most time and is the most aggressive will “win” the debates. But with seasoned moderation, we can cultivate an environment of thoughtful, respectful dialogue. The trolls get booted and the disciples who sincerely want to grow to maturity in Jesus can safely continue the conversation.

It seems that we could further improve the community by developing courses to be experienced within it. In this way, we can make space both for open-ended exploration and structured pathways to Christian growth.

I invite you to think of other ways that online communities could be tools that enable Christians to imitate Christ. The expectation isn’t that I have all the answers, but that we find them together.

Imagine with me an online community where the majority of your congregation is discussing the Scriptures, praying for one another, learning to practice spiritual disciplines, and getting prepared to share their faith. As they read thoughtful contributions from other disciples around the world, and take the time to write out their own understanding of various topics, what kind of people will they become?

What kind of person would you become?

In case you haven’t guessed, this is what we’re attempting at Uncommon Pursuit. If this vision inspires your heart, then please create an account and join us in building an online community that forms its participants into Christlikeness. It’s free to join.

I want to hear your thoughts.

Learn to represent God online… and everywhere else. The Uncommon Pursuit community provides an environment to develop friendships with brothers and sisters in Christ around the world.

You can share your thoughts here:

https://up.uncommonpursuit.net/t/who-are-you-becoming-online/574

Photo by Joshua Rawson-Harris on Unsplash