The New Normal Of The Future ~ Hybrid Church
A Reflection From Tom Bandy...
The New Normal Of The Future ~ Hybrid Church
Leaders anticipate a hybrid church that will seamlessly cross back and forth between real-time and virtual time, real space and cyberspace. Currently any shift from in-person to on-line jars our sensibilities. It is confusing and alarming, more hindrance than enhancement, and people love it or hate it. That is swiftly changing. The future church (large or small, urban or rural) will seamlessly connect people in-person and on-line and no one will even notice it happen.
Christian education will follow public and university education, seamlessly connecting in-person and on-line learning. Christian worship will follow artistic venues for music, drama, theater, and yes, even dance, seamlessly integrating on-site and virtual experience. Media platforms far more sophisticated than Zoom are already being developed.
At the beginning of the 20th century people began to adapt to the telephone. At first it seemed alien. Why not just walk next door and knock on the door? Within 20 years it became so integral to our daily life that we didn’t even notice it.
In 2003 my publisher told me they would start electronic publishing for all my books. I questioned whether anybody would buy an e-book. He told me to just wait for it. Once the hardware and software were perfected, e-books would replace print as normal reading. It took about fifteen years to happen.
The rapid popularity of the “Smart Watch” is a good metaphor for the future. In a split second, no matter what you are doing, you can send a text, chat with a friend, surf the web, check your blood pressure, count your steps, and listen to music ... and simultaneously shake hands, converse with fellow joggers, read a book, and feel the wind. A Christian can read the Bible, pray with a friend, explore a library, practice their spiritual discipline, participate in a small group, and worship with large group ... be there and be elsewhere, be with these people and still be with those people, without any flicker or fluster.
Emerging or Emergent? Many questions about the new normal remain to be answered, and the answers will vary from church to church and context to context. One size will never, ever again, fit all.
However, new normal take time. Remember, it took twenty years for the telephone to change normal behavior; fifteen years for electronic publishing to change reading habits; and five years for Smart Watches to capture the attention of young and old.
It took a hundred years for the ancient church to be socially acceptable; fifty years for the Protestant Reformation to take root; and twenty years for the social justice movement to gain momentum. So for the time being there is still room for exclusively in-person worship, centralized institutions, hierarchical denominations, and good worship defined by procedure and process. Like every leap in behavioral norms, the seamless hybrid church may take ten to twenty years to fully emerge as the new normal.
My generation may not live to experience it. But if we want our children and grandchildren to participate in church, we have to start now preparing the way. The only thing we know for certain is that the New Normal is coming and it will happen sooner than we think.
Excerpts from “Church-Wide Trends”
Thomas A. Bandy October 2020