As churches emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, I often hear congregational leaders and pastors ask one another, “What’s next? What do we need to do?” Typical responses often center on the church becoming more digitally available to people. Indeed, churches have made essential investments in livestreaming worship, Zoom facilitation of small groups, technology, and making ministry programs more accessible. This is a pipeline approach: finding the direct vehicle to deliver religious and spiritual content.
As much as access to the internet has changed the way people relate to one another, work, live, and experience the world, the moveable type printing press has had an equal, if not greater, impact in the way people have access to information. The internet is over 40 years old, but the moveable printing press is over 500 years old. Much like the internet, the flow of information via a moveable type printing press made access to information economical and widespread in previous centuries. Christians saw the new technology as a way to share Christianity with the masses. Widespread efforts in literacy helped fuel the Protestant Reformation in Europe. The moveable type printing press enabled a free exchange of ideas and Christian theology, which were not available to the masses previously. The moveable type printing press disrupted the theological pipeline monopoly of the Catholic Church.
Most mainline churches, without realizing it, are accustomed to a pipeline approach to ministry. The denominational system is a pipeline, where the denomination is the source of religious goods and services, and the congregation and the people are the end users. This system of pipeline delivery worked well for the 20th century, but as many know, the ecclesiastical pipeline system is no longer providing what churches need as congregations see declines in church affiliation and attendance.
What is emerging now for congregations and Christian communities is an evolution that does not see the local congregation as the end of the relational pipeline of denominations but sees the congregation as a spiritual platform.
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