Back in 1992, IBM launched an ad campaign with a single word: think. It was brilliant because who doesn’t want to be regarded as a thinker? But then, in 1997, along came Steve Jobs and Apple who launched what is regarded as one of the most creative strokes of advertising genius in all commercial history. He said, \u201cThink? No! Think different.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Everything changed from that point forward. We now live in the world of Steve Jobs in a very real sense, as much of our daily processing has to do with the technology he created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Riffing on the Apple slogan, there is a sense in which the church has had to think differently for the past two years. In March of 2020, the world changed. Suddenly, believers had to start asking a lot of questions no one had considered before. If we aren\u2019t able to meet in a physical location, how do we worship together? What does worship look like online? How can we be with people in spirit while not being with them in person? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over time, the questions have evolved. Many churches have resumed their in-person services, but how many people will come back to the physical building? Did the pandemic permanently move some people online for their spiritual engagement? These are important questions, but maybe they\u2019re not the most important when it comes to thinking differently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2026over half the planet\u2019s population is online<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
In November of 2020, Carey Nieuwhof wrote in a guest column for Barna about the effects of COVID on worship services and the migration towards all things digital: \u201cCrisis is an accelerator, and so many of the trends we\u2019ve been seeing over the last few decades are now happening faster than ever, in real time. The digital genie is out of the bottle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In other words, before the pandemic<\/em>, there was already a growing trend towards moving life online, and then the virus simply sped up that migration. As of the first quarter of 2021, over one-quarter of the<\/em> world\u2019s population<\/em> has an active Facebook account. Instagram currently has one billion users<\/em>. It\u2019s estimated now that 4.66 billion people have access to the internet. That means over half the planet\u2019s population is online<\/em>. It also means that, for the Christian, you can share the gospel online with a whole bunch of people who would never come to a church but would click on a link they saw while scrolling through Facebook or YouTube.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s exactly how Dana Bearden discovered Storyline Church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Storyline Church is Light Bearers\u2019 online church. It streams every Saturday at 11am (PT) on Facebook, YouTube, and live.storyline.church. It exists so that people, church and unchurched, can encounter the beauty of God\u2019s character and the Bible as one big story of His love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dana was raised attending church regularly, but she struggled to see God as loving and felt she needed to earn His favor. Eventually, buckling under the pressure and wounded by local church members, Dana stopped identifying as a Christian. However, after her father passed away, she reconnected with God, though she still didn\u2019t feel comfortable attending church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fast forward several years to the beginning of the pandemic. Dana lived next to a Christian woman who began sending her sermons on YouTube by a pastor named Pavel Goia. Focused on God\u2019s love, the messages helped Dana understand the gospel for the first time, and it began to heal her. Soon the YouTube algorithm suggested messages by David Asscherick, then Ty Gibson, and then messages by Storyline Church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dana watched a service from Storyline and found she loved the gospel-centered messages and the approach that spoke to the unchurched heart as well as to the churched. Soon she became a regular attendee. Eventually, after listening to many messages by David and Ty, as well as Jeffrey Rosario, she decided that she wanted to start keeping the Sabbath again, not as a means of earning God\u2019s favor but because she had a real relationship with Him. Attending Storyline\u2019s virtual service became a regular part of her Sabbath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, two years into the pandemic, Dana serves as a virtual greeter for Storyline. Every week at 11am (PT), she opens her laptop not to simply watch church but to participate. She welcomes attendees, tells them she\u2019s glad to \u201csee\u201d them, responds to questions, and reminds them how they can re-watch the service if they missed parts. When she became a virtual greeter, Dana requested to be present on Facebook regularly because she wanted to be a familiar face and name for people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“\u2026there\u2019s this whole population of people that never had a place to go to begin with.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to be a missionary to foreign countries,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m pretty sure that\u2019s not going to happen at my age\u2026 And I don\u2019t have a theological background. However, what I do have is the good news that I can share with the people I interact with every day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a world of unknowns, Storyline has given Dana a place to live out her mission. She doesn\u2019t see online church as a stand-in for regular church. It\u2019s her <\/em>church. She sees it as a place to meet with people who might not feel comfortable coming to a physical church building but they would click on a link, just like she did. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor some people [online church] is a place that you went when you couldn\u2019t meet in church, but as soon as the restrictions were lifted, they went back to their churches, and I get that, but there\u2019s this whole population of people that never had a place to go to begin with.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are many important questions to ask right now but maybe a big one the pandemic has forced believers to consider is this: Are we meeting people where they are at? A good many of them are online not just in a crisis but all the time. Maybe we shouldn\u2019t just be asking how to get out of this hard situation or when things will go back to normal. Maybe we should also be exploring this neglected mission field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you\u2019d like to worship with us online, you can join Storyline at 11am (PT) every Saturday on YouTube, Facebook, or at live.storyline.church. We recently completed a six-part sermon series titled, Think Different<\/em>, which breaks down new ways to think about Christianity, God, Heaven, suffering, and more. Our current series, Kingdom Manifesto<\/em>, explores the greatest sermon ever preached\u2014the sermon on the mount.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you already consider Storyline to be your community and you\u2019d like a chance to serve, like Dana, you can look into becoming a virtual greeter at storyline.church\/virtual-greeter. If you\u2019d like to support Light Bearers in our work to create a beautiful, winsome online church service, consider becoming a regular partner with us as we seek to spread the gospel everywhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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