When Jesus gives the Great Commission, he tells his followers to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19). Perhaps the word “nation” explains some of the reluctance church leaders have had around online ministry, a trend that was much more widespread prior to March 2020. When we think of “all nations,” we think of geographic places with physical locations and borders. The word “nation” implies a face-to-face community, not a digital connection.

But the Great Commission doesn’t end there. It concludes with a reminder that Christ is “with you always” (Matthew 28:20). Christ is with you at work and at home, at school and on the road, behind your desk and in front of your computer screen. Jesus is always near, wherever we find ourselves. As church leaders, we are called to go and to do likewise, to love and to serve our communities in all ways, even if those ways are distributed and digital. God calls us to acts of ministry, to make known that Christ is always with our communities. And even before COVID-19 hit, our communities were always online.

We are called to digital ministry because the Great Commission sends us into a culture that no longer goes online. Our culture lives online. Before COVID-19, we spent 2 hours and 22 minutes just on social media each day. That number has likely increased to an average of four hours per day since the onset of the pandemic.

It’s not just the time we spend online that matters to us as church leaders. It’s how most everything we do has some element of digital connection. The invention of the iPhone marked the end of stationary, desktop computing. Thanks to smartphones (owned by 81% of Americans), digital technologies have become as mobile as we are.

When I mow my lawn, I listen to music from my Spotify app. When I take a picture on my vacation, I post it to Instagram. When I teach Confirmation at my church, my kids are splitting their attention between our lesson and their Snapchat profiles. Everything in this life has become a hybrid of offline and online experiences. Few domains are still unplugged from the reach of digital technology.

We are called to do digital ministry not just because our churches have moved worship services to YouTube, Zoom, and Facebook as a result of COVID. We are called to do digital ministry because our communities are always connected to digital technology. As leaders, we must learn what it means to do church online so that Christ’s presence might be more widely known in digital spaces.

However and whenever the pandemic ends, our churches have a digital future. The web is our new mission field. God is calling us into digital spaces to make disciples.

Join the Virginia, North Carolina, and Southeast Synods on September 14th at 11 AM EDT for the first of a three-part webinar series on Being Church in a Digital Age. Registration is required at the following link: se-reg.brtapp.com/BeingChurchinaDigitalAge