Digital Wonderland Church (DWC) of Chicago recently announced a bold new direction. Already a multi-site megachurch, it became apparent to the pastoral leadership that there is a lot of great preaching on YouTube, and indeed most of it is better than the preaching within Digital Wonderland Church.
"I don't know why it didn't occur to us sooner," explained Executive Pastor of Cultural Sensitivity and Discipleship, Francis Stevenson. "For the longest time we were churning along with modest growth fueled by frustrated small-church folk leaving their sham churches for ours, but we think this new direction will surely bring in some mega-numbers so we can fulfill our mission of opening up digital cafe churches all over the land."
According to William "Smitty" Smithers, Pastor of Demography, modern consumers of digital media are looking to the Church to give them exactly the same thing they are familiar with everywhere else. Apparently multiple studies have shown that people today like to watch stuff on screens, and they also like music, especially if it is fun or moving, so long as they don't have to engage something that causes perplexity or personal accountability. They want professional excellence in a warm and welcoming, but not personality invasive, environment.
That discovery, apparently altogether unknown to the rest of the oblivious churches in the land, got the staff of DWC together to embark upon new optics for 2020. The 180 person team at DWC came together and brain stormed--more like Brain Tsunamied--ways to reach this technologically superior plugged-in culture. They were in unanimous agreement that the best way to reach people lost in superficiality is to become equally superficial.
Pastor Smithers continued, "We plan to find excellence out there and then bring it to our people via digital media! We want witty comedian pastors, shocking vignettes, moving stories, montages, voice-overs of various scenes, Ted Talks, etc. We can stitch these together each week to provide our people with the cutting edge of Christianity rather than trotting out some frumpy no talent from some midwestern seminary.”
We asked Pastor Smithers a few questions:
1. Could this change make pastors obsolete, since people will see that the church is becoming a place where vaguely "Christian" inspiration is cobbled together from various online sources, which of course they will learn they can do on their own or with friends?
2. Is there really a need to travel to the satellite digital church when people can solipsistically view a screen anywhere, including those times of deep meditation on the porcelain throne? Or they can also view the screen in small groups at home, and so why the need for crowds and parking lots?
3. Surely tithe can be prorated down, since thousands and potentially millions of people would be supporting the same worship bands and a select few celebrity pastors, correct?
To all of this Pastor Smithers only blithely responded that, "It is certainly not perfect, but neither is ignoring the cultural trends in our musty churches with pipe organs and hymnals and bad performances. We have to meet people where they are in order to lead a small percentage of them to sit for a weekend seminar explaining the Christian Faith to them. We are building a massive church to find the Church within the church, within the church. "
A fine point indeed.
