Episode Details

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. Today we’re talking with return guest Benjamin Windle from Life Place Church in Australia.

Whether or not churches are going to opt in to the digital revolution is no longer an option. Now the question is, how do churches operate and minister in a digital world, particularly to younger generations? Listen in to today’s podcast as Benjamin shares research and insights on what Millennials and Gen Z are really looking for, and how churches can reach them.

• Understanding younger generations. // When it comes to digital ministry, we can be tempted to design our churches around convenience and comfort to such a degree that we shift the necessary convictions in our church. Part of this is because we may have misread what younger generations are looking for in church. We may wrongly think that they are shallow and interested primarily in entertainment and what’s “cool”, and focus our services on that. But instead we should see younger generations as a movement of thoughtful people in search of significance and authenticity.
• Be part of a community. // One of our primary needs is community. Loneliness among Gen Z in particular is epidemic and coincides with the surge in social media. We may think that young people want everything to be fast and easy and on their phone, but we shouldn’t be afraid of challenging them to be a contributing part of a biblical community.
• Seven layers of community. // Benjamin has found seven layers of practice to community in the bible. Preaching, worship, prayer, and evangelism can be done well online. But the other three are best done in-person: interpersonal responsibility, inconvenient hospitality, and institutional physicality.
• Interpersonal responsibility. // We all have a spiritual fingerprint of God with unique gifts and need to understand that we each bring something special to the church and community. We aren’t in community simply to receive; we’re in community because we have a biblical responsibility to each other.
• Inconvenient hospitality. // Benjamin challenges us with the idea that community or friendship doesn’t really exist until we are willing to inconvenience ourselves for each other. Inconvenient hospitality is a necessary and intentional part of God’s design for community, and it’s where richness is found in our relationships with each other.
• Institutional physicality. // Barna discovered that the thing churchgoers missed the most during COVID was taking communion in-person. It’s likely that Gen Z will start to crave the physicality of what community really is, such as sharing a meal together, as their lives are primarily focused on the online world.
• Reimagine, reevaluate, reconnect, and rebuild. //  Benjamin has put together a report with Barna called Digital Church in a Lonely World: 7 Ingredients of Church Community. It walks through the seven layers of community and also bold digital innovation. In this report Benjamin covers four words that form a framework for churches of any size to apply to any area of their ministry. These include: reimagine, reevaluate, reconnect, and rebuild. Download the full report from Barna.com.

Learn more about Benjamin and his work