The Post-Pandemic Future of the Church

DJ Chuang: Well, I’m very blessed to be in a healthy season of life, and I’ve been personally feeling good, normal and healthy for about two and a half years, almost three years now, so just very grateful for that.
When this coronavirus spread and the quarantine happened, it was March 19th in California when they started this stay at home order.

So, we’re coming up right at the one month mark as this podcast is being listened to.
We’re all working from home. I work with the .BIBLE Registry and doing remote work for seven years, so that part is not new to me. And then, my wife and son have to figure out how to use Zoom and digital tools, and they’re doing okay working from home, and the experience is a little bit different even though I’ve done remote work for a number of years.

It’s that, because we’re all working remote, it’s taking extra concentration and extra energy to be on the screen exclusively for your work. Whereas, I think before, there was a little more, “Hey, I could get outside and go to Starbucks or Chick-fil-A”, which is where I like to do my work for at least half the day and to have that fresh air and the ambient noise in the background, but now confined to my desk mostly.
I could get wifi coverage outside, but no one’s really come up with a laptop that works well in sunlight.

DJ Chuang: At least I can’t afford one.

DJ Chuang: That would be great.And then, we’re recording this on Zoom, and I’ve been using Zoom more than I used to before because now there’s more people on Zoom, so it’s given me an extra boost of social connections.
And then, in terms of church life, we’re all meeting online.

So, I’m part of two small groups through Zoom, and I’m surprised how many people are not comfortable using these technologies that I’ve been using for years.

DJ Chuang: All of that.
All of that, and where to click, and how do you get the audio working? How do you get the webcam working? How do you meet yourself?
I mean every little step that is already intuitive for us, is brand new to people and they don’t know what Zoom is.

DJ Chuang: Yeah, very much so, texting and on the phone.
It took me almost half an hour to get my mom onto a Zoom video call.

DJ Chuang: Then, I realized I should have just sent her a link that would have cut out about 20 minutes of that,
but it was still for people that are not tech literate. They don’t see the screen as a screen.
They don’t know where to focus and where to look when you say, “Oh, just click on file” and say, they’re like, “Where’s the file?”,
and it’s too much information. I feel that way myself on the basketball court, so I cannot look at the basketball court and see my team and know where to throw the ball.

I kind of know the feeling’s similar, so I’m guessing when someone sees the screen, they don’t know how to find things on the screen just like I can’t find my teammates on the basketball field, so I can’t be that point guard.

DJ Chuang: And I have a relative that is still very comfortable and longs for the day of the DOS Prompt where he’d type command lines.

DJ Chuang: It gives you one single point of focus.

DJ Chuang: So, I think that’s why he likes it.

DJ Chuang: It’s going to have two or three different reactions.
So, there are going to be people that revert back and resist these new technologies that we’ve been using for a month or two. There’s going to be people that really springboard off of this as entering a new future and creating a new future of how we do church.

And I think those are the ones that are going to thrive because we’re already in a fast changing world and this has, in one sense, pushed the spiritual accelerator,
put the gas to the metal to say, “Hey, we got to pivot from using 20th century ministry methodologies and get into the 21st century.” And so church is not a 90-minute event on a weekend.
It is a 24/7 engagement minus sleep hours, of course, but the 24/7 engagement online and offline, and that should be seamless, and it already is for some tribes of people in the digital natives. And so we’re realizing, “Hey, all of us need to become proficient as digital natives to be more effective in growing spiritually connecting with each other and being all that God created us to be in today’s time.”
And then, I think there’s a, what was the third one?

DJ Chuang: Yes. So, my second carry over those that we’re gonna go ahead and take, take it even further out and create new ways in ministry.
The second one is going to kind of be in that middle place, still trying to figure out what’s gonna be the way they do ministry and there’s uncertainty, but I think, the reality is that second category in addition to what you said are people that are still hesitant to meet physically because they’re afraid of germs because I don’t think the coronavirus thing is going to be resolved in three to six months. I think it’s still going to be a risky proposition to be around social gatherings.
That’s not gonna just going to go away overnight.

And then secondly, I think churches that are still reaching people, they know how easy it is to at least put a live stream online.
So, the thought with the second category is that active churchgoers are already attending church about 50% of the time.

DJ Chuang: Yes, before the coronavirus, and now with these online tools, I think churches can realize that, “Hey, here’s the other 50% of the time that people can connect with your home church online.” And I think that will help the church make the transition in a slower fashion.

DJ Chuang: So that’s my second category is people that are going to take more time and make the turn more slowly.
Whereas my second category, there’s people that will just spring ahead and “Hey, everything’s up for grabs, let’s just reconfigure and redo now.”

DJ Chuang: I collect playing cards, so I like to use playing cards as a metaphor that the deck has been shuffled.

DJ Chuang: The deck has been shuffled in terms of how church is going to be effective at reaching its, the audience, that it’s called to reach. So as you mentioned there are churches, particularly local churches that are very community focused and it’s because of the proximity or particular demographics that holds that church together in a physical proximity or demographic proximity.

There are large churches, those over 2000 in size and sociologically they’re called mega churches, and those draw on quality of program.
And in order to draw an audience of over 2000 in Marketing Speak, you have to find the lowest common denominator because you got to please a lot of people.
So, that part of doing that is having super high quality speakers, super high quality children’s programs, super high quality music, and that whole experience. And the process of participating in the church has to be defined into very simple steps — 1,2,3,4, whether you call that classes, or you call them next steps, so that everybody goes through the same template.

So, it’s not very agile, although they add the diversity of programming because with the large number of people, you can operate and run a lot of different programs. So, high quality and then numbers of programs is how you keep a large audience glued together. So, that’s the cohesion.
Okay, so we have the proximity as the cohesion, we have the professionalism and programs as the cohesion.
And then going into the 21st century, finally, the cohesion is going to be digital engagement, as are digital natives and social media is already showing that’s how people, a lot of people, are behaving and living, and churches have not been in that space and have not leveraged that space for its own people. Now, that’s the new cohesion. I mean, you look at how much time people, regardless of faith, are spending on social media, that is their cohesion point, that’s their engagement, that’s their productivity. And so, Youtubers, the ones that have huge audiences, still have to have that quality level.
But what keeps those people there is also some kind of cohesion among that tribe that has to be facilitated,
and that’s not going to be facilitated by just one talent producing quality content.

DJ Chuang: That’s the question that we have to figure out as a church.
Now, we can learn from the examples of how people are doing it now through social media.
So, where audiences gravitate towards and, and I’m not sure that’s the appropriate model for churches because more goes on in church than just one talent that draws a big audience that likes to stay engaged, whether they have, funny memes or they have a funny perspective.

So, it tends to be entertainment driven, which is what social media has been amplified and good at,
but it’s also strongly engagement driven for other online communities, whether it’s a gaming community or people of similar interest.

So, there are groups for this disabled parents with kids of a certain disease, and they have little Facebook group and they have great conversations, something that’s been happening around the world — subtle Asian traits, a handful of high schoolers in Australia started noticing these quirky things about being bicultural, Asian and Western, and that’s blown up into, was it 1.7 million fans on their Facebook Group?

Chris Lim: Yeah, members of the group. I’ve been a member of that as well — Subtle Cristian Traits

DJ Chuang: A year and a half, two years.
And it’s spun off into all kinds of other topics, and that’s one of the few places where I’ve seen the group having way more people than the page.
Actually, the page has a lot more with brands and whatever else, but in this instance, the group has one point seven, the page has around thirty thousand, maybe?

I think that’s an example of a community-driven thing rather than a celebrity or talent-driven thing, and people are relating each other. So, well, that’s the one that came to mind.

DJ Chuang: Actually there’s other examples.

DJ Chuang: So, but there’s a group called Subtle Asian Mental Health, and there’s over thirty, almost forty thousand people in that group, and they’re having very honest, candid, transparent conversations.
So when someone shares a story or question, there’s at least thirty to fifty comments, people engaging and having conversation.

That’s a part of relationship, that relationships grow, and we experience relationship because of conversations, not just physical proximity,
but meaningful conversations that connect us heart to heart.

So, we don’t fully know what’s going to look like now that we have everybody online and some people are going to really push that forward beyond the, “Hey, let’s just get other around the sermon.”

DJ Chuang: My hope is it will actually produce stronger disciples because all of us are autonomous rather than relying on the talent.

DJ Chuang: Amen.

DJ Chuang: Or even just multiple churches connecting and having more cross pollenization.

DJ Chuang: So, one of things that happened was the churches in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, twenty-eight churches had worship leaders sing a song collectively in a virtual choir, well, they call it virtual choir, but it’s just one song, and they did it beautifully. It may not be as professionally perfect, but it was human.
It was the church coming together online, even though they’re physically closer than, but I mean, the physical geography is no longer an issue when you can go online and connect and worship in that way, and I’ll send you a link, so you can add it to the show notes.

DJ Chuang: That’s an example of what the future could look like.

DJ Chuang: So, I think the local has to reconfigure and accommodate or expand into the Universal Church and have that both and relationship and that’s gonna help the entire body of Christ to grow together.

DJ Chuang: And I’ll give a mention to a book that maybe ahead of its time, but very timely now, which is the Changing Church Economics by Mark DeYmaz.
So, he came at it from more of on the grounds model, but I think the online reality has opened up the eyes of church, institutional church, and physical buildings that it’s not economically sustainable to use more financial terms. And I think that reality is going to sink in because giving patterns are going to look different and how do you keep that. how do you keep the lights on and the staff paid when these realities are changing, and we have multiple affiliations, and so, it’s shaking things up a lot.

I don’t have the answer for that, but while it’s being shaken up, we need to stay connected to what Christ is about, what the mission is, realize things have to change.
It’s going to hurt us by trying to hold on to how things have been done in the past.
Now, change is painful in itself also, but how’d we not get changes by holding on to what doesn’t change, right?

DJ Chuang: We in the 2019 America have had it very comfortable.
And I’ve been listening to some devotions from Tim Keller, and he’s been describing that secular humanism which is the dominating thought in our pop culture is that Americans don’t know how to suffer. Short of it.
We’ve been lulled into comfort and complacency that even a headache and then we got to take medicine for a headache, and just the smallest annoying things we get bent out of shape.

I’ve lived in California for maybe thirteen years now, but I grew up in Virginia.
One of the quirky things I noticed about Californian natives is if the temperature changes two degrees, they’re screaming for–

DJ Chuang: –for discomfort.

DJ Chuang: Two things have happened because of this pandemic. One is Anti-Asian racism.
So, as we speak now, almost ten thousand people have signed a statement that was put together by the Asian-American Christian Collaborative, and I helped with launching their website and it was a volunteer group of about twenty or thirty people that have put this statement out to rally Christians around this unified cause statement. Anti-Asian racism needs to be addressed and stopped, and there’s over a thousand racially motivated incidents that have harmed people verbally and even physically in America already, and the Reddit ricks in the political circles are not toning down yet.

So, that’s a serious issue that Christians, both Asian-American and non-Asians, are addressing through their series of influences individually and organizationally.
So, that’s the most immediate thing that’s affecting the collective of Asian-American Christians and churches, and then, in terms of mental health, that one’s still rather elusive because of our shame-based background and how we think and were influenced, and shaped by our family context.
And so, we don’t yet have the freedom uh in the family context or extended family to address mental health issues, but as we mentioned a bit earlier, the Subtle Asian Mental Health Facebook group has opened up a safe place online and that’s helping people.
I’m not sure how that’s translated into Christians that might be Asian-American and struggle with mental health,
but at least it’s addressing it across faith lines, which is a good thing.

DJ Chuang: We have to work twice as hard–

(laughter)

DJ Chuang: –because we have to live and, well, we have to live in the Asian context because of relationships, and then we have to work in the American context.
And then, sometimes, you have to work with a diversity of people. Then, if you want to be effective with diversity,
then you have to work to learn multiple languages kind of like how spf.io’s facilitating in terms of at least communication.

For those of us are Asian-American then for younger ones that are just beginning to realize that it’s dealing with identity issues on top of that,
and then, mental health, a lot of the therapies and techniques are really culturally Western, getting culturally competent. Mental health care is still hard to find.
The Asian Subtle Mental Health group has put together a nice directory of those who are culturally competent, so that’s been helpful.
The whole Asian-American church and Asian-American mental health issues are certainly big parts of my life now.

I’ve written a book “Multi-Asian Church” just describing and highlighting, shedding a light on the phenomena of Asian-American-led multiethnic churches.
I think what Asian-Americans bring to the table in terms of the American church and the church globally is that we are inherently bicultural.

DJ Chuang: Whereas, most other people grew up in one culture and they know how to navigate one culture because we are inherently bicultural.
We can navigate multiple cultures, and that can create a different kind of a multiethnic church that could bring everybody else together.
So, that’s one of the takeaways from the book. And then, I also have a podcast called Erasing Shame at erasingshame.com.
So, that one, we have weekly conversations about healthy living; we take it beyond mental health, but shame underlies so much of our lives as Asians, but also everybody.
Shame, it looks different in every culture, and we don’t know how to talk about.
So, the way Renee Brown, a popular researcher and psychologist, has described that shame festers in silence, so the genesis of the podcast idea was the opposite silences to talk.
So, podcasting is a great talk medium.

(laughter)

DJ Chuang: That’s right.

DJ Chuang: And I got a little church called Saddleback, (laughter) and our pastor likes to make tweetable, memorable quotes.
And the ones relevant here is that the sharing of feelings is the beginning of healing, and you don’t have to share with everybody, but you do have to share with somebody,
so, it’s such, just when you can’t find that one person you can share with, if you like your understood and supported.

DJ Chuang: I keep my phone line and social media pretty open.
So, I have an open door policy. So, what I’m experiencing or intuiting during this season is that people don’t need content or people don’t need more content because we’ve got so much content, people need connection.

So, by keeping my doors open and I’m saying, “I’ll be here to listen to you if you want to leave a voicemail, here’s my number if you want to leave a message and to have someone that’s nonjudgmental, and we’ll just pay attention to what you say. This is the, I guess, the magic of talk therapy or prayer is that we say something out loud and you get out of your system, it lightens your load. That’s why prayer is so powerful, potentially, when you can unload your feelings before a God who can handle it, and you can unload with someone who’s safe that can carry the weight of that. That’s how you lighten your burden, and that’s how you can walk, start walking towards that journey of healing.

DJ Chuang: Yep, DJ Chuang everywhere.
I believe I’ve gotten that handle everywhere, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, .com.

DJ Chuang: LinkedIn.

DJ Chuang: Thank you Chris for continuing your conversations on TheoTech.
I know technology is a big part of our spiritual lives and not just our everyday lives.