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The Future is Not Guaranteed

While the need for face-to-face events is an obvious one, that fact alone does not guarantee that geographically based, brick-and-mortar religious congregations will continue to be the center of religious life. As a point of comparison, a very similar discussion is taking place right now in the newspaper industry, where declining advertising revenues, circulation numbers, and share prices are threatening the existence even of large and successful newspapers. Journalists and newspaper lovers often say, in a protesting voice, "But there will always be a need for quality reporting."

That observation is true, yet it alone is not enough to sustain an industry whose underpinnings have been washed away or at least very seriously eroded by online utilities. Quality reporting may endure in some form or another, but that does not guarantee newspapers will.

Similarly, religious people everywhere are drawn toward one another, and that impulse does not seem to have dimmed in any way. Indeed, Campbell estimated the people who belonged to the online communities she studied spent an average of twelve hours a week interacting with those communities, and at times some even drove up to twelve hours to meet with fellow community members in person at different times. But just because there remains a need for religious congregations does not mean the church on the corner will necessarily continue unchanged in the digital age.

Clayton Christensen, the Harvard Business School management professor known for his work on innovation, has advised newspapers to think about their mission in terms of what jobs people need to get done. In the past, if you wanted to find a new job or sell your car or hire a babysitter, you consulted your local newspaper's classified section. Today you would probably use craigslist, Monster.com, or any number of other websites, many of them free. If you want to know what events are happening this weekend, or how the weather is going to be—again, the newspaper no longer has a monopoly on helping you get those tasks completed.

In the digital age, geographically based congregations are principally important because they provide a venue for face-to-face interaction. However, seeing congregations as filling a specific need is different from seeing congregations as taken-for-granted community institutions that will always exist. The very fact that you find yourself justifying the need for congregations means the context has already changed.

Greg Atkinson, the Church 2.0 teacher and writer, articulates a new ethos that many others share. "Church is wherever two or more people are gathered to worship God," he said. "It takes place in buildings, schools, theatres, shopping centers, apartments, prisons, basements and coffee shops across the country and around the world; it happens online and in Second Life. It happens wherever people gather." And with a growing number of online utilities that make community organizing simple and cheap, the imperative to have a building as an organizing principle becomes less urgent.