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Chris Lim: Hi, everyone. This is Chris Lim with the TheoTech podcast.
In today’s episode, I’m joined by DJ Chuang, a strategy consultant with the .BIBLE Domain Name Registry.
We have a conversation about the future of church, examples of effective online communities,
and the impact of COVID-19 particularly on Asian-Americans and mental health. So, let’s get started.
[music playing]
Chris Lim: I know that we’ve had random conversations over Instagram and everything about your thoughts on how the coronavirus is going to impact the future of the church, and I also know that you’re very much involved with mental health in the church through your Erasing Shame podcast, also Asian-American ministry and what that looks like.
And so, I think there’s a lot of really cool things that we can talk about today, and I just wanted to kick it off maybe by talking about how you’re doing, how you’re experiencing this crisis, what it means for your church, your work, and your family.
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.
Chris Lim: I know.
DJ Chuang: At least I can’t afford one.
Chris Lim: I was hoping that those E Ink displays that are in the Kindle and stuff would get so popular that the price would go down and we could have color displays on our laptop that are E Ink, but it’s only this year, finally, that some color E Ink displays are coming out in Europe.
And even so, it’s just like really expensive, the refresh rate isn’t so great, and it’s just that technology is still kind of a little ways out before it goes mainstream, but the moment it does, man, we can enjoy the sun a lot more.
It’s gonna be great.
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.
Chris Lim: So, what’s going on?
They’re getting stuck, like, they can’t get their video or audio working or something more than that.
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.
Chris Lim: How do you teach them if you don’t even have Zoom to be able to explain things to them in the first place?
Are you texting them? You go here, go there.
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.
Chris Lim: Oh, man.
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.
Chris Lim: That makes sense. That’s a good analogy.
I think, I take it for granted because I guess I’ve been so conditioned by using computers that there is actually significance to different parts of the screen, like the upper left, the right, the upper right, and the whole windowing system, like all these things, they’re actually not that necessarily very intuitive.
Yeah.
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.
Chris Lim: Oh, there’s a lot of coders who loved living in the command line, living in the terminal and tmax and stuff like that.
DJ Chuang: It gives you one single point of focus.
Chris Lim: It does.
DJ Chuang: So, I think that’s why he likes it.
Chris Lim: Yeah, it’s so easy to focus that way and it looks cool too.
Makes you look pretty epic if you’re in front of terminal.
Do you think that with this basically wholesale push that everyone has to go digital that coming out of this now that people already have the skills, there’s gonna basically, even if we could meet in person, do you think that a large portion of what we do both in work and church and other things will remain largely digital?
Or do you think there’s gonna be kind of like a backlash of relief of like, “Let’s never use those tools again because we can finally meet each other.”
What’s your sense, your perspective on that, and how people are gonna be using these tools coming out of this?
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?
Chris Lim: I see, I can see another category of people who are maybe who see the future.
They probably agree with the second category, but they might have more reservations.
They’re more concerned or something. So they don’t really want to reject it, but they’re afraid of fully embracing digital too because they think they’re gonna lose something;
they’re gonna lose the value of in person, or they’re gonna lose, you know…
So maybe that sparks your imagination for your idea.
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.
Chris Lim: Before the coronavirus even.
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.
Chris Lim: Oh, I see.
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.”
Chris Lim: Do you think though that the move to digital has kind of also revealed a lot of the weaknesses of the old model as well as the obsolescence of it?
Like things that really were still being practiced to no good purpose anymore.
Also the competition, frankly, that’s online because I think that a lot of churches that were not already online, their unique value proposition was their location in the neighborhood or the relationships that were formed in that community more than the content even, right?
And it just seems like the push to online exposes people like it’s so easy just to ALT tab, or to switch links to a different livestream or to join other random Zoom calls and everything. And it seems as if a lot of the things that kept a sense of loyalty perhaps to one specific church expression don’t have as much weight anymore.
And what do you think about that? What that’s going to mean for going online?
DJ Chuang: I collect playing cards, so I like to use playing cards as a metaphor that the deck has been shuffled.
Chris Lim: (laughter) 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.
Chris Lim: So, what are those other things that are happening amongst that tribe to sustain that cohesion?
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.
Chris Lim: That’s interesting —
DJ Chuang: Actually there’s other examples.
Chris Lim: — because being part of that group is kind of like you’re definitely, I’m definitely, most of the time, a lurker, I’m just kind of like sitting there, I’m not contributing much, but then, every so often a meme will come by that’s funny and I’ll share with a friend or I tried to post two things to the Subtle Cristian Traits group one that was noticing in the Indonesian bible that Yoda, Y-O-D-A, shows up in Jesus lineage actually.
(laughter)
So, I posted that one, that one got quite got some good engagement on the Subtle Christian Traits group.
So it’s like learning the language of that subculture. It’s like, “Okay, so this is like a meme group, so you can’t really, you don’t really promote sophisticated humor or whatever like that, but you just post a meme there and then they’ll get accepted by the admins and then shared.”And so, it’s like kind of navigating the culture of the group because that’s really all that they offer just memes on a regular basis from all their community members that are relevant to that either Asianess or to being a Christian.
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.”
Chris Lim: For sure.
DJ Chuang: My hope is it will actually produce stronger disciples because all of us are autonomous rather than relying on the talent.
Chris Lim: That’s my hope too, is that now the church goes from being that product that gets consumed into a platform that unleashes everybody’s gift in every part of the world, every part of the digital world, every part of the physical world, too.
DJ Chuang: Amen.
Chris Lim: Because even thinking about the Subtle Asian Mental Health group or something, it’s like,
wouldn’t it be amazing for more and more Asians who are Christians to be part of that group and to be connecting with people deeply about shared struggles
and about how the gospel changes our lives and helps us, even in the midst when we’re struggling, we don’t have to be perfect or anything. And then, isn’t that so powerful?
Because it’s not restricted to just one church’s group. It’s so much better. That’s the most authentic, organic discipleship and evangelism that you could have instead of being just, “Oh, I’m part of my church’s only mental health group.”, like, you can be out there in the public square with other people; that seems like a great share.
DJ Chuang: Or even just multiple churches connecting and having more cross pollenization.
Chris Lim: Yes.
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.
Chris Lim: That’d be fantastic.
DJ Chuang: That’s an example of what the future could look like.
Chris Lim: More and more often, too, because that basically means that coronavirus is completely effectively displaced the old conception of church as a building.
It literally is not a building, and it also changes the imagination for everybody to realize, “Oh, I’m a member of a church.
It doesn’t mean this one specific church, like that twenty-eight church network, that is church.
Twenty-eight of us together in all our communities; we are the church, and it connects us globally, too.”
It’s so helpful because now, instead of only talking about it or theorizing about it, everyone is experiencing for the reality that I am a member of the body of Christ everywhere,
not just this local community that I was visiting once a week on Sunday.
That’s a powerful change.
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.
Chris Lim: Amen.
That also sounds like, I think, the other conception that I was thinking of was before, there’s a very kind of strong loyalty or exclusivity that you can really only be a member of one literal local church, but now that it’s all virtual, it’s like that doesn’t, it hasn’t made sense for a while, but now it’s more obvious that it doesn’t make sense because even as a believer, we’re connected through so many different networks, whether it’s the code for the kingdom network from the past, or whether it be our shared interest in Asia-American and Multiethnic Ministry, whether it be our digital side of .BIBLE and work that we’ve done at some of the conferences I’ve been to, there’s so many connecting paths and we’re not even members of the same local church.
I think that just creating that space in our church institution to realize that people are members of many different networks and that’s actually their value.
It’s not the fact that they are exclusively are a member of my community that makes them significant to us.
It’s that they are so interconnected, and they bring the gifts of those connections to us and everywhere they go, every place they go.
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?
Chris Lim: Amen.
Christ is the one who provides for us and will get us through this, and cause us to grow actually, I think, through this into the mature body of Christ because it has felt like we just kind of want to stay comfortable with the status quo for a long time, and now we don’t have that choice anymore.
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–
Chris Lim: how cold it is or how hot it is–
DJ Chuang: –for discomfort.
Chris Lim: –That’s funny.
I also feel like our high performance society feeds off of that quote unquote comfort because I think that it felt for a long time, even in tech, there is very little breathing room.
If you got sick or if you’re tired and you try to take like two weeks off, you would be so behind on your work that you would rather just keep suffering through your sickness and just keep working most of the times because you absolutely had to.
And so I can see this interplay of like, well, on the one hand we’re not very good at suffering, but also on the other hand, we’ve built a society that assumes that we don’t suffer long, that we kind of keep pressing in and keep being productive and keep pushing forward.
And it seems like COVID is kind of undone both of those things because when we, I mean, I know tech people are still working super hard and medical people are working really hard, but it’s kind of changed the pace I think.
And then, secondly is that we are all suffering like the whole world is suffering together on this one and Americans, too, and so, definitely undoing some of those things that Tim Keller pointed out in what you were describing.
Have you, maybe we can take a conversation a little bit to the Asian-American Ministry that you’ve discussed before.
I’m Asian-American and you are as well, and it would be interesting to talk a little bit about what you’ve noticed is unique about the Asian-American perspective versus maybe a more widely known American perspective, and also more Asian “Asian” perspective when it comes to things like mental health or when it comes to things like church and ministry.
I know those are pretty broad questions, but any insight you give, I think could be an interesting conversation.
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.
Chris Lim: Yeah, because I definitely noticed even though I was born in America and everything, the way that my upbringing in my Asian household, right, really influenced the way that I communicate, and the subtlety oftentimes where we rely so much on context and indirect communication and how that can be ineffective a lot of times in American context.
And it’s not until I became an adult that I became so much more aware of all of these subtle Asian traits that were being expressed, and changing the way I interact with the world, and then becoming more aware of it was helpful because then I can make a choice.
And I think that’s what it was, it’s that I could be more intentional about choosing to lean into my Asian way of communicating or lean into more American way, and just trying to navigate that according to the different circumstances, but it does feel like a lot of work because what comes automatically to others and makes it work for them doesn’t work for me, so I have to be more intentional.
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.
Chris Lim: Yes.
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)
Chris Lim: Indeed, it is.
It’s just recording a conversation and sharing it with the world.
I think I experienced that myself in my own life where the moment I discovered that others were struggling with what I was struggling with, it really changed things, but you had to find those people because the ones who didn’t, they wouldn’t get it and they might hurt more.
But when you talk with others who get it, then it’s like, there’s some healing that happens just from–
DJ Chuang: That’s right.
Chris Lim: –knowing that you experience together.
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.
Chris Lim: That’s great.
How do we help people who are listening right now?
I guess we can just encourage listeners if you guys are having something on your mind or heart, please do reach out how they share one person
and then I guess I’ll be praying for our listeners as well later.
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.
Chris Lim: That’s wonderful.
Thank you so much DJ.
I think that’s a great note to end on.
We have so much more that we can talk about.
I hope to have you on the show again in the future, but everyone, if you’d like to connect with DJ, you can do so with his Twitter @djchuang.
DJ Chuang: Yep, DJ Chuang everywhere.
I believe I’ve gotten that handle everywhere, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, .com.
Chris Lim: djchuang.com.
DJ Chuang: LinkedIn.
Chris Lim: Fantastic.
And, as you also mentioned our work with spf.io, one thing I’m hoping for is that as churches become more digital, it makes it so much easier to go multilingual, or to even be multiethnic and multilingual, and I haven’t figured out the relationship piece yet because it is harder to build relationship with a stranger online I think than in person, but I’m hopeful that now that it’s largely digital, so much more can be accessible to people who are deaf and hard of hearing and also people who speak other languages, and that we can form that connection and community around that. I don’t know what it’s gonna look like yet, but I’m hopeful that this is like setting the stage for something big like that.
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.
Chris Lim: Amen.
Alright, thank you, and until next time.
[music playing]
What might church look like when quarantine is over? In today’s episode, DJ Chuang, strategy consultant for .BIBLE Domain Name Registry, maps out a few predictions of what the future of church could look like post-pandemic. He and Chris also discuss some examples of effective online communities, new formats for connection, and the impact of COVID-19 on Asian-Americans and mental health.
Thank you to our patrons for making this episode possible!
Join us in conversation about this topic at the TheoTech Forums!
DJ Chuang’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/djchuang
DJ’s book Multiasian.Church: https://multiasian.church/
DJ’s Podcast, Erasing Shame: https://erasingshame.com/
Pittsburgh Virtual Choir: https://www.post-gazette.com/news/faith-religion/2020/04/10/Churches-form-virtual-choir-for-Easter-anthem-coronavirus-covid-19/stories/202004100118
TheoTech Patreon: www.patreon.com/theotech