The episode delves into the compelling arguments presented in 'Scrolling Ourselves to Death,' where the authors contend that the uncritical acceptance of technology within church culture poses existential threats to genuine discipleship.

By drawing parallels to Postman’s seminal work, the discussion emphasizes that the medium through which messages are conveyed inexorably alters the messages themselves. This is particularly salient for ministry leaders who navigate the complexities of fostering authentic community amidst the distractions of digital engagement.

The conversation highlights the necessity for churches to reclaim their distinctiveness by prioritizing embodied community practices over digital convenience, thereby fostering deeper connections and substantive spiritual growth. The authors suggest actionable strategies for ministry leaders to cultivate environments that resist the allure of digital consumerism, advocating for a return to foundational ecclesiastical principles that promote holistic spiritual formation in an increasingly fragmented society.

Takeaways:

• The podcast delves into the significant influence of technology on our communication and how it shapes our understanding of the message we convey.
• Brett McCracken and Ivan Mesa's book, 'Scrolling Ourselves to Death,' emphasizes the need for churches to critically evaluate their use of technology in outreach and engagement.
• The discussion explores the notion that no technological medium is neutral and that each form alters the content and delivery of messages.
• Listeners are encouraged to prioritize embodied community and personal relationships over digital distractions to foster deeper connections in ministry.

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Read the review of Scrolling Ourselves to Death.

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Today's episode is brought to you by Dennis and Nydia Ducharme. Thank you for giving others hope as.

What we see as maybe a neutral vehicle for the message. We're not quite seeing how every medium changes the message.

And that's the big, like, the big idea of Marshall McLuhan first and then Neil Postman as his kind of heir apparent was just to kind of instill in people's minds this idea that no technological form is neutral. It changes things. Like some. Some of the changes can be positive, some of the changes can be negative, but it does change things.

And you're naive to think that you can just kind of take the same message, transfer it to a different technology or medium and expect that it's going to be received or that the message will be the same. It won't be. And that was Postman's big, provocative point in Abusing Ourselves to Death.

Welcome to Apollos Watered. In the Ministry Deep Dive podcast, we tackle the big questions few are willing to ask about ministry, culture, and the challenges you face every day.

Ministry is hard. The road ahead isn't always clear. But with God, nothing is impossible.

We come alongside pastors and ministry leaders like you, exploring obstacles, uncovering opportunities, and sharing practical ways to thrive. Our vision is simple to see thriving ministry leaders and churches noticeably transforming their world. So let's dive deep together.

It was way ahead of its time. His insights on television, on its forming effects, were way ahead of anyone at that time. But he was before the Internet age.

He was before the digital age.

So we need to revisit his thesis and say, or wonder to ourselves, are we not only amusing ourselves to death now, are we scrolling ourselves to death? And that's why we're talking about the book Scrolling Ourselves to Death. It's a new book by Brett McCracken and Ivan Mesa, published by Crossway.

Now, in this book, Brett and Ivan discuss, along with several different other authors, how our phones are actually forming us today and how many churches have unconsciously adopted technology, thinking that it's amoral when it's actually shaping the very people that they're trying to reach and the people that are in their pews week in and week out, often in very malforming ways. Now, let me tell you a little bit about each of these authors, these gentlemen that are here with us today. Brett is no stranger to the show.

He's been on here before to discuss his book wisdom Pyramid. He's also the author of the book uncomfortable. He is the editor. I want to make sure I get this right.

He's the senior editor and director of communications at the Gospel Coalition, and he's written for the Wall Street Journal, Christianity Today.

He's.

He lives in California with his wife and three kids. Ivan, who is new to the show today, is the editorial director at the Gospel Coalition and editor of before you lose your faith.

He holds a PhD from Southern Seminary and is shaping theological books behind the scenes. He lives in Georgia with his wife and children.

This conversation is for those of you out there who are ministry leaders who feel the spiritual weight of having to shepherd and lead in an age of digital distraction. We've all felt it. And you want to lead your people into something better. So let's step out of the scroll for a moment and into a deeper conversation.

Brett and Ivan, welcome to the ministry Deep dive.

Thanks for having us.

Thanks for having us.

All right, here we go. Let's start off with the fast five. Are you ready?

Yeah.

Okay, number one. What's one book that you've reread more than once? And why.

Gilead for me by Marilynne Robinson?

Why?

One of my favorite novels. It's the reflections of a dying pastor reflecting on life, ministry, theology, all that. So just a really great novel.

Awesome.

For me, I'll say. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I used to read that every spring for a stretch of a decade. I. I don't know why. I just love the prose.

The writing itself is beautiful to me.

All right, how about this number two? Early birder.

Night owl.

Night.

Night owl.

And has that changed?

Changed in ministry or parenthood?

I'm a natural night owl who has learned to go against the grain of his body and psyche and become an early bird. Having four children, I'm sure, is part of that story.

How old are your kids? Roughly? Like the ranges?

Yeah. Ages 2 to 9.

Oh, boy. You're right in the middle of it. You're right in the middle of it. How about you, Brad?

I'm naturally an early bird and have become more so with kids. So we have three kids going on four, six, five and three. And. Yeah. So it helps that I'm naturally an early bird because our kids are up very early.

Okay, here we go then. This is the third question. Which fictional character do you relate to? A little too much.

I like to say. I'm like the puddle glum. Character from Narnia. More of a little bit of a Debbie Downer personality.

I'm sure you'll see that come out in today's interview. But it's also one of the reasons why Brett and I get along together.

We have a curmudgeonly perspective, an appreciative but yet curmudgeonly perspective on all things tech.

Okay. All right, next.

Brett, Man, I don't have an answer, like, off the top of my head to that question. Maybe I'll just go with a movie character that is from one of my favorite movies. Jim Caviezel's character in the Thin Red Line.

If you've seen that movie, Private Wit is his name. It's a World War II movie, but it's like a philosophical kind of tone poem.

And his, his, his voiceover and musings in that movie have always resonated deeply with me.

I love that. Right, here's the next question then. What's your go to way to reset your soul after digital overload?

I mean, I'm sure the same answer will be for the two of us. The church. I'm sure there's more to say that Mr. Wisdom Pyramid.

But yeah, I think the local church, the gathering of God's people every seven days, I think that is the, the biggest way that I get to do that.

Yeah, I would say any of the things that I put on the bottom layers of the Wisdom Pyramid. So scripture, like analog Bible time, you know, with no phone in sight.

The physical embodied local church gathering on Sunday morning is a huge reset from digital exhaustion for me. And then nature, you know, just going outside.

I was just in Norway for two weeks with my family, and it was so nice to like, be minimally on my phone out in nature for an extended period of time.

Okay, number five, what is one trend in church culture today that excites you and one that concerns you?

I think a trend. And we at TGC get to have, like a front row seat to a lot of the trends, both, you know, good and bad in the church.

I think one of the most encouraging things over the past year, I would say, is a new generation, especially Gen Z men, who are interested in and excited. We, we see reports from the UK about revival, especially among men as well. So there, there's just a big kind of blowing of the spirit, it seems.

You can talk about the vibe shift, you can talk about revival. There's a, a confluence of different things that it's kind of hard when you're in the moment to figure out what exactly is going on?

But we get to see, you know, a lot of younger writers, especially younger men who are interested in writing for tgc, coming to our conferences and just genuinely earnest and excited about theology and learning and serving. I see this in my own local church. So, yeah, I would say that.

Awesome.

I would just concur on. That's the encouraging thing.

The.

The leveling off of the rise of the nuns and kind of a return to people being interested in church again, especially with younger generations. That's super encouraging.

Well, then let's transition a bit. It's interesting. I wasn't necessarily expecting that answer, so I'm encouraged to see where this conversation goes.

Today, let's talk about the book Scrolling Ourselves to Death. In preparation for this, before you even suggested it, I went back and I read Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death.

And I was amazed at how precinct the book really was way before its time. And it was nice. And to read one right after the other, Amusing Ourselves to Death, right into Scrolling Ourselves to Death.

It was quite refreshing to see someone take up the baton in our Internet age. But what led you to want to write this book?

Yeah, we have an editorial team at TGC and we have a Slack channel.

And someone threw out the idea of, well, what if we actually put a book together and went even bigger than an article and tried to kind of take the baton, as you say, and update his wisdom for the digital age with a, with a special focus on the church. And so, yeah, that was the origin of it. And we proceeded to put together a great lineup of contributors and get crossway involved.

And yeah, so that was the origin.

Okay, well then let's talk about some of the technology aspects that you bring out in the book.

One of the things that I thought was very fascinating that I haven't seen too much on, I mean, a little bit here and there, because I've read your stuff, I've read Felicity Wu song, I've read different aspects and even Jacques, as we're talking about technology. But one of the things that we, we. That I hear from pastors all the time is many of them don't think of technology as immoral. They think of as amoral.

It's all about what you do with it. You know, they don't think about the medium being the message per se. They're like, oh, how do we get the gospel out there?

But one of the things that you write about in the book, that we as Christians have sometimes naively just embrace technology and been at the forefront of it. But it's had in many ways disastrous consequences, or let's put it this way, unintended consequences.

So why do so many Christians fail to see how this technology actually shapes our lives and our communities?

I think the reason why so many Christians have tended to not think super critically about technology is really comes from a well intentioned place of wanting to practically use it. And evangelicals in particular are very wired to get the message out right by any means necessary, far and wide.

The Great Commission, it's in our DNA.

And so out of that good impulse, we have tended to leverage technology, communication technologies as fast as we possibly can to kind of see how television, for example, can be used to kind of spread the gospel. And that's a lot of what Neil Postman talked about in Amusing Ourselves to Death.

But with the Internet, of course, there's great potential and we don't want to discount the good potential use that these technologies do have.

But out of that well intentioned kind of good place can come the, the unintended consequences of not quite thinking through what are some of the ways that this new medium might change the message in the process of using it as a, as what we see as maybe a neutral vehicle for the message. We're not quite seeing how every medium changes the message.

And that's the big like the big idea of Marshall McLuhan first and then Neil Postman as his kind of heir apparently was just to kind of instill in people's minds this idea that no technological form is neutral. It changes things. Like some of the changes can be positive, some of the changes can be negative, but it does change things.

And you're naive to think that you can just kind of take the same message, transfer it to a different technology or medium and expect that it's going to be received or that the message will be the same. You, it won't be.

And that was Postman's big provocative point in Amusing Ourselves to Death is he was focusing on television and how television really changes ideas and discourse. And the way that we process information by virtue of the form itself of television.

And that's what we're trying to, we're taking that idea and applying it to scrolling technologies. What is the form of apps and scrolling and social media feeds. How does that change the messages?

There might be some good uses of using these platforms to get the gospel out. The Gospel Coalition, we do that every day. We're using these technologies in what we think are valid and helpful ways.

But at the same time, we recognize that there are negative ways, that these technologies have introduced changes into society. And we. We can go into those more as we go along.

Well, that's exactly what I wanted to talk about, simply because I hear pastors all the time. They almost turn like a puppy. Like, what do you mean? Don't use different aspects of technology? Shouldn't we do it all for the glory of God? Yes.

And then they hear the same answer every single time. The message is the same, but the medium changes. The medium changes, but the medium always shifts.

And it has pluses and it has minuses, those unintended consequences. And as you yourself mentioned in Postman's Book, I mean, Postman didn't see the Internet like we know it today.

And he was very much in love with topography.

He was talking about just writing and that communication and how television, he felt, was really ruining it by really disembodying it, conflating it with a form of entertainment. So a lot of the reverence was lost.

How has it, and how is it actually shaping our communal witness as a church to the unbelieving world when we uncritically adapt these technologies?

I think there's so many different directions I could go with this answer by looking specifically at digital technologies. But to take social media as one example, I think there's a lot of negative ways that we're being shaped to.

Because social media is communication in public for an audience, for your followers. I think there's a lot of, like, hazards there, right?

Because we tend to start to do things and say things that are going to get retweeted, are going to get applause, going to get liked. And maybe we are not as inclined to tell the truth or say what, you know, what might not be liked. And so there's. There's bias.

There's a bias in the medium itself of social media towards kind of saying what the narrative, what is friendly to the narrative, whatever partisan narrative you're wanting to appeal to, rather than saying what's true. And as Christians, that's a problem. Right? We are to be truth tellers. We are to be prophetic truth tellers in culture.

And so using social media too much and kind of becoming beholden to a social media audience becomes problematic.

And I've seen it become problematic for so many Christians, pastors on social media, where they start to kind of play to the crowd, play to the tribe that they're wanting to appeal to, and they're less inclined to kind of be an advocate for truth itself.

So that's just one example of how a technological form itself, with its disposition towards performance for an audience, for likes, retweets, it affects the messages that you're communicating on that platform.

I can't remember which chapter it was, but it was talking about the performance, that it really is a performance, and the blurring of the line between what is actually newsworthy and entertainment. And news had become a form of entertainment, which it doesn't allow for critical engagement. As a matter of fact, we're just.

And I don't remember who wrote the chapter, but they basically, it was, I think it was postman's student at one time in graduate school where he said, quoted Postman is saying that college education is only good for being on a game show because it trivializes everything. We have all the access to all this information from all over the world that we can't possibly process or even know what to do with.

So we become disembodied. But it also, but we're designed to be embodied and be with other people.

So by continuing then to embrace this technological form, we're actually contributing to the disembodiment and the isolation and the loneliness. Is that true?

I would say yes. I mean, we don't have to, like, conjecture about this. We've lived through this in different ways.

And I think during the pandemic, we had a little microcosm and a long, lengthy microcosm of what that looks like. I know, just personally, my own life, I saw the muscles of community atrophy in terms of relationships.

I, I, going back to church months later, you just kind of realize, wow, I was missing out a lot. And just even it took years to get back into the regular rhythms before the pandemic and before the lockdowns and shutdowns and all that.

So I've seen that, you know, across the church. I've seen in my own heart of ways that I am tempted when I. Whether to become a consumer of the church, whether to isolate from God's people.

Because, you know, to quote another book of my colleague here's works, church is uncomfortable. It goes against the grain of our own desires, our own creature comforts. And so, yeah, we've all lived through that in different ways.

And I think our book is trying to address some of that.

Would you say that Your book is trying to address this idea of comfortability. And I mean, you say dopamine addiction, and when you put it that way, of course, people are like, oh. And everyone recognizes. Recognizes it.

I mean, especially Jonathan Haidt's work on the anxious generation. But do you really think that part of the idolatry that's implicit underneath it is this idea of comfortability?

I think definitely. I think if you can pinpoint one kind of central idol of the digital age, it would be comfort. I mean, the smartphone is a device of convenience.

It's called the iPhone, right?

To emphasize this is for you, this is about creating a world that is oriented around you and your ease and your convenience, your tastes and preferences, right? You pick which apps you want, which apps you don't want. You follow, you unfollow, subscribe, unsubscribe.

Everything about the interface of scrolling life. Digital life is consumerism. It's like the apotheosis of consumerism.

We talk about being in late capitalism like we are in peak consumerism in the smartphone age. The iPhone is the ultimate icon of the idol of consumerism. It's just everything about it shapes us.

To think that the world revolves around me and caters to my convenience. Next day shipping. I can order anything I want with two clicks.

I can go to church with two clicks if I don't want the inconvenience of stepping out of my house and going somewhere physically. I can have friends, you know, digitally with, you know, without the friction and the discomfort of having to like, be in an embodied space together.

So all of that is just for. For convenience, for ease, for personalization to you as an individual consumer.

And I think there's a whole host of problems with that when it comes to the church. And what happens when you as a hyper consumer shaped by the logic of the smartphone, to think that the world should revolve itself around you.

What happens when you go to a church and suddenly you're in this community that doesn't revolve itself around you and you are not the main character and you are called to kind of submit to a leadership higher than you and serve other people than yourself, you know, and to bear. Kind of to bear with one another in love, even if you're not agreeing on everything politically or ideologically. Like, so the.

The life of the church and the life of the smartphone are very different. They're at odds. And I think that a lot of pastors today would tell you that this is one of the biggest kind of underlying challenges in discipleship.

How do you disciple people who are being shaped by the smartphone to kind of think that a low friction catering everything to me way of living is the best way of living?

The church offers a different way of living where discomfort and friction shapes you in good ways to become more like Jesus, to become a community that is diverse and bears with one another through ups and downs, for better and worse, in a kind of covenantal family community. So, yeah, I could go on and on. I'm kind of merging all of my books right now, Uncomfortable and the Wisdom Pyramid and Scrolling Ourselves to death.

But it is all connected, I think, because of that central idea that the underlying idolatry of the digital age is consumerism, where the individual is placed at the center of the world.

It's interesting, as you mentioned this and Ivan, if you want to weigh in, then please feel free to. I interviewed Christian Smith in his book why Religion Went Obsolete. I don't know if you've read the book, it's fantastic.

But in it he talks about kind of this, a spiderweb of different forces that have kind of come back together that have crowded out faith from public life that in, in many respects. And I, I asked him this question directly.

Are we basically seeing the result of bad theology that's been played out and reduced over time, just coming to its full born conclusion? And he said, yes. And I think to recapture some of that idea of being uncomfortable of having that life. And yet those who are those more.

I don't want to say seeker.

I don't feel like that's a term that's being used anymore, but much more evangelistically or drawing people in the attraction kind of idea of ministry. It seems like those churches are much more shaped and they're saying, well, we're drawing in people. You're just trying to stop that.

We need to meet people where they are. Right. That's kind of the argument.

How do you help people respond to these pastors that are feeling that tension and don't wish to cater to the idolatry, but yet they feel they're being torn and saying, oh, look at this church, it's growing. I need to do the same thing. Because they feel that internal pressure or external pressure. How then do we help? Help them to see the best way forward?

Yeah, I think what I said earlier in terms of the, the, the five questions, that one trend of a new generation who's just really eager and seeking the Lord. And I think that's one of the most encouraging things that I'm seeing today.

I mean, setting aside, you know, pastors encouraging them to serve in their churches with a joyful heart and. And not look at other churches and think, wow, I'm not doing enough. Just.

I think there's a lot of pastoral guilt that comes, or pastoral envy even, that comes in. Into this conversation. But I would just say that there is a.

A generation of younger Christians who are kind of have lived and breathed this digital world and in some ways have become digital exiles. That's not, you know, writ large, not every single person in that generational cohort, but I think there's enough of a mass there of.

Of young people who have, unlike me, were born into this generation with all things technology, social media, smartphones, all that. And there you see all kinds of different examples of them wanting to buck against that trend, just, you know, being more analog. The. The re.

There's a whole book called the Revenge of the Analog. And there. There's a return to just being with people playing board games, that kind of stuff.

And so I think that's one of the most encouraging things, that there. There can be a certain narrative that takes hold, that captures the imagination where we just ruined a whole generation.

And there's some truth, there's some challenges and that come into these conversations about how technology has really presented some problems when it comes to discipleship and the church context. But the opposite is also true.

I think there's also opportunities for the church, this analog institution the Lord created, to then capitalize on this moment in terms of reaching, evangelizing the lost, and then offering a oasis, basically, for these digital exiles who need something more that the world cannot give. And so I think the church has this contrarian opportunity to offer up something that's not like what the rest of the world offers.

Do you think churches are actually set up to be that contrarian group?

Because I do find some of the very same voices that you're talking about saying, we want to be that way, but I find a lot of pastors saying, we want to be that way. We have no idea how.

Well, you're right that this is not across the board. There are a lot of churches that try or feel guilty, like, I need to know what the latest social media platform is.

I need to get on TikTok, and I need to repackage my sermon content to do that. So I think that.

That.

That is definitely the case. But the. The surprising truth is it's not that complicated. It's. It's doing. It's. It's more like ecclesial minimalism.

Do fewer things by just Returning to the basics of having a vibrant community that loves others, that welcomes visitors, that that has priority of the preached word.

A sermon that maybe can take 30, 45, maybe even one hour, having the sacraments, the bodily, physical, tangible representation of the gospel in the bread and in the cup. I think it's just a good reminder for churches and pastors in small towns or big towns just be the church.

Be like the church that was maybe 10 years ago and 20 years ago and 100 years ago. So I think when I talk to pastors, there's so much reason to be encouraged, like we don't have to find the new thing.

Are there ways to steward technology and use resources and be thoughtful and prudent about that? Absolutely.

We're not, you know, advocating Luddites necessarily, but I think by and large church should look like what the church has always looked like.

The question that I find, and I interact with different ministry leaders and there's a lot of different still I a disagreement on the exact trajectory of where things are going. I mean, none of us are prophets. We, we both, I think, work for non profits, but we're not, we're not prophets.

And as we're looking at this system we're in, I mean we. There's been no secret of the, the statistics of the decline of Christianity in the Western nations.

Whether it's looking at it just the decline of Christian institutions. I think we're now at 26 that have closed or merged since COVID maybe more. King's College closed not too long ago.

Of course, one of my alma maters, Trinity, moved to Canada and I know Spurgeon College in the UK just announced that they were closing after I believe 169 years, which was quite frustrating. Yet we are hearing rumblings of some spirit movement and yet the sociologists are saying the numbers aren't reflecting that yet.

Right now it's much more anecdotal and I hope that's true, that we do see that. I know that the American Bible Society have run some stats and they're saying that Gen Z is much more likely to do it. They do want that analog life.

It does seem a bit more eclectic and attractive. I mean, even my children, which are in their early 20s and preteens, have some analog tendencies that they find to be very interesting.

But yet.

It seems though that the technopoly is true.

As you even mentioned in the book, a technopoly is when, and I want to make sure I get this correct, that when a technology develops quickly without law, without anyone Forcing it. And it becomes the main medium that becomes essential almost to everyone around.

How then do we create and help our people create counter practices that counter these digital rhythms that are forcing us into certain forms of formation?

Yeah, I mean, I think one thing is just a general thing and then I'll get into some specific ideas, but I think just this whole idea we've been talking about a counter, formational kind of countercultural community.

I think churches just need to lean into that and kind of embrace that identity and quit trying to kind of keep up with the Joneses and like compete with digital culture as if we are. As if we are on the same plane as what's on TikTok or on social media. We are not. The church is categorically different. We are at.

The church is at her best when she leans into her difference, her identity, which is wholly other than anything else in culture and always has been. And so I think we start by just leaning into. We are a very different alternative. I love the language of oasis that Ivan used.

And we lean into that in part by just embracing our tradition and kind of the continuity of church history. That ecclesial minimalism. I love that phrase. Ivan. Just like what has been true about the church for 2,000 years.

For a long time, evangelicals who were wired towards pragmatism, the kind of mega church seeker sensitive, they viewed church history and institutional history as a liability that we kind of had to hide or run away from.

I think we're at a moment where young people who have been raised in this ephemeral, throwaway, fast moving digital world where everything is just like TikTok speed. It's like one pseudo event after another. Nothing feels stable, nothing feels like there's any continuity. They're hungry for that.

They're hungry for stability and continuity. And we have that. We have the resources for that within church history. And so just lean into that and embrace that.

See that as an asset and not a liability. So that's a general dispositional advice that I would give.

One specific thing that I've been saying as I've been talking about this book is just for pastors, people up front in churches to just like, give people specific permission to put away their phones during church. Like, say that at the beginning of your service. Like, dare to say that. Right. I think people will respond.

Well, if you say like, look, we're not requiring this, we're not legalistic about this.

But we think your experience of church for one or two hours every Sunday is best if you are able to be present, fully present with God first and foremost and the people around you, the brothers and sisters in Christ who are your church community. And when we have our devices that can create a barrier, that can create distractions.

So let's all put our phones away for the next few hours and be as present as we can be.

I think that's one small thing that we can institute in our churches that can start to kind of give people a vision for what that kind of experience is like. We forget, right?

Unless we force ourselves to have unmediated time, we forget how good it is and what it's like to actually look around you rather than always looking down. You know, even that head posture. We forget what it's like to have your head looking up and around rather than always looking down at your phone.

So give people permission to do that and see what happens in your church. And personally, I think a lot of Gen Z and younger people are very, very like ready for that.

It might be the boomers who have the harder time with that. It might be the 50 somethings in your church. You have a hard time putting their phone away for the whole service.

But when I look around my church on Sunday mornings, it is the 20 somethings who are phone free. They're the ones taking physical notes on in a journal with a pen and paper. They're not using their phones to like read their Bible.

They have physical Bibles.

And I think that's just a sign that there's a readiness for that, there's a hunger for analog kind of pure presence in church without the distractions, without all the things that a phone presents you with at any given moment that can pull your attention away from where you are.

Ivan, do you have any thoughts on that?

I mean there's so much you can say in terms of practices.

But I think if I had to figure out what would be the most strategic practice, I think if there's a pastor, a church leader, an elder in a church body, listen to this. I would say so much more is caught than taught.

And I, and I have been so refreshed and encouraged, convicted by different church leaders, pastors that I've had in different churches who have been faithful pastors studying God's word. I mean, you know, the proverbial iceberg, you see the top above the water, but there's this glacier underneath.

And I think a key Part of that in our digital world is a pastor elder who is attentive to God's word, Attentive, like Brett just said, to the needs around the community, not just your care. And so yeah, I would just encourage church leaders to give thought about your own personal practices.

And if you do that, well, not perfectly, you'll still have for better, for worse. Even the editor of scrolling ourselves to death struggle with these tech related conversations in our own lives.

But I would say a directional desire to go against the flow of our algorithmic culture that just tries to suck your attention and, and use that and monetize that.

And so when that does not happen, you have pastors who are attentive to God's word, studying that, proclaiming that, living that out and then serving the needs around them.

So there's this idea of embodiment, being aware of the needs of the people and returning in some respect. We had Steven Presley on talking about the first two centuries and we were talking a little bit more about Alan Kreider's work.

The ferment of the early church and some of the four habits that I found to be very interesting were the four things that actually influenced the growth of the early church. Was one was patience. It was called the patient ferment of the early church.

And he said that, you know, the early church said Jesus was never in a hurry, nor should we be.

And then fast forward to now, which we, some would say, you know, we've had an eschatology of hurry where we got to get it done, we got to communicate. But you're seeing almost the end of that movement or the pendulum's gone this far and people are saying no, we need to go back.

And I keep hearing over and over and over again, health formation, health formation, health. And yet many of our churches are set up in some respect to depending on your church, where it's at, your tradition, and so on and so forth.

Because as you've talked about, this is an evangelical phenomenon. The orthodox and the Roman Catholics don't do necessarily and have not embraced this technological wave as much as evangelicals have.

And I think that bears out. We see the numbers going down. And very few denominations like the PCA has one of the few that actually has grown over the last 10 years and part.

I know that there is the idea of eminence and transcendence and liturgy and history. And I'm seeing that younger generation gravitate towards some of those old forms because they do.

And you have these different models as you've alluded to, but yet a lot of the churches still have saying we need to be online, we need to reach people where they're at. And it's become a commercialization aspect. There is this idea of playing to it, that consumerism and it does delete the gospel.

How has the commercialization though of digital content influenced church ministry itself? Any thoughts, disagreements?

Perhaps the first thing that comes to mind is just the way that it's become harder to just grab people's attention because of digital capitalism is run on kind of the currency of attention.

And so everyone is just investing a ton of money into getting their thing in front of eyeballs to grab that five second impression on social media or two seconds, just anything to break through the constant flood of information to grab people's attention. And it's fierce. I mean the competition is fierce for attention. And I think that's one really practical way where churches are feeling the pressure.

Like how do we break through the noise and grab people's attention? Well, maybe we need to be on social media.

Maybe we need to have a really like amazing social media presence that's going to have the potential to break through the noise. And I see a lot of pastors kind of taking that approach.

And I don't think that it's necessarily a bad thing for churches to be on social media and to like put their stuff out there. But I don't think it's a winning strategy to think that the way you're going to reach people is by playing on the same terms as digital capitalism.

You're not going to be able to compete with these corporations that have deep pockets as a church in terms of grabbing a slice of the attention pie. So yet again I think the church needs to lean into, well, how are we different?

Like we're not a major corporation that's going to be able to put together like a really cool 10 second ad that's going to grab people's attention. We're just not and we don't need to be. So how can we reach people? How can we be a blessing to people on social media or through digital technologies?

So yeah, that's just another example of what I was saying earlier about like, I think the church is at its best when she leans into her difference and stops trying to kind of compete as if she is One of the same, just one, one of many products out there in the landscape of, you know, media and digital capitalism.

I would echo all that.

The only, only thing I would add would be, you know, we work at TGC and we serve the church by producing resources in our Internet age, online podcasts, YouTube, even books.

And so as I step a little bit back and I observe the, the Christian publishing world and, and YouTube, I mean there's so many reasons to be encouraged.

So none of what Brett just said means therefore there should be no evangelical engagement with media and creating good resources that serve the broader church. We do a lot of that at tgc.

You know, one of the surprising things at the beginning of this year was that now infamous interview with Joe Rogan with Wes Huff. And we want more people doing conversations like this and what Wes Huff has done, even engaging non Christians on a platform like YouTube.

And then that can serve as an evangelistic context not divorced from the local church.

Ultimately we would hope TGC or West Huff or any other person who's been given stewardship, whether a few hundreds of years, thousands or hundreds of thousands of views to use and steward that in service of plugging people into churches, obviously for them to come to know and trust in Jesus and then as Christians then to be part of the church.

There's so many different things that are going on. I mean we do want people to engage people where they're at conversationally.

It's just we don't have the resources of the pockets, nor should we. Instead we have to be able to embody a different way of living, a new way of being human, as Dan Strange has talked about. And I find that to be true.

But again, that modeling aspect that I think is key, that Alan Kreider's talked about, the early church has talked about, I mean even disciple the fact we talk about a follower, the idea of mentoring, you're seeing it be coming back. The pendulum has gone one way and now it's hopefully moving back to regulator self.

That doesn't mean though that the Gospel challenge isn't still great. I mean there's a host of different challenges that are out there.

And as we're talking about the digital or media ecology which we find ourselves in, it can be a Challenge, especially with the polarization that the church is experiencing today and how social media has helped continue that polarization because it thrives off the eyeballs. How do we help our pastors navigate that?

Well, I mean, you've already given us some great pointers to be able to do that, put your phone away within worship. But how do we then avoid some of those digital polarizations that the algorithms help create and facilitate online?

Well, that's a key reason why we did this book primarily aimed at church leaders. I think one is just to be aware of it. So just in terms of diagnosing the problem, I think is the key first step.

And so a book like Scrolling Ourselves to Death hopefully helps church leaders think through, okay, this is probably a problem not just out there in the world, but it's also a problem in my own heart, in my own family. And so as an individual, as a family, as a church, what would it look like?

And then this is where I think, in contrast to Neil Postman's book, we're trying to offer something more positive and actually constructive. I think Neil Postman did a great job in terms of diagnosing the problem, but it fell short of offering prescriptions.

And so this is where, especially in the kind of latter part of our book, we're trying to offer tangible suggestions for church, not overly prescriptive, but just to say, yeah, it matters that we are embodied community, be with and among your people.

And I think for pastors especially, I mean, one of the realities is, and I think Brett touched on this, pastors can preach out there and not to the flocks in their care. At tgc, we did an article titled something like I was preaching to my Twitter feed.

And I think if many, if most pastors, I should say, if some pastors are honest, that there have been times where they're super hyper aware of what conversations going on on X or on Facebook or whatever. And there might, they might not be as aware of what are the needs happening among their congregation.

And I think one of the perverse things that happens, especially if you're super dialed into the online the algorithm, is that that can eclipse and distort what's actually going on the ground with those that are nearest your, your, your life, your neighborhood, your church. And so you can start preaching to those issues, but no one really is aware of what you're talking about.

They're aware of that member who has cancer, that, that, that couple that are, you know, having a hard time in their marriage or parenting challenges, or they're really struggling with the faith and, and they have a teenage son who's been wayward. So all these things I think are just the, the warp and wolf of pastoral ministry.

And the more pastors especially can be dialed into those challenges, then that will kind of filter its way into the sermons and the preaching so that you offer God's word to those people in your real life context.

That's very helpful, I think, to help recover this idea of formation.

But do you think the way that the church has been set up in modern day because of the examples we've had, the kind of the Robert Schuller there's a fantastic book that's just come out examining kind of the effects of many of the marketing strategies that have been applied into the church and how they played out over time. Do you think what we're seeing is actually a recovery of much more of the shepherding information model?

And is that, I mean first of all, is that what we're seeing?

I think so. I think there's a, I think it's connected to the kind of interest in spiritual formation and kind of rules of life and disciplines.

Just this idea that like Christianity, discipleship is about growth, it's about change. It's not just about feeding me what I, what I want to hear, it's about challenging me.

I think that that's part of why younger men, Gen Z men are kind of newly reinterested in Christianity because they, they're kind of, it's kind of Jordan Peterson 12 Rules for Life, Neo stoicism. They have this bent towards self improvement and I want to live in a better way. And I digital life isn't giving me that like the scrolling life.

So yeah, I think churches are wise to kind of lean in, lean away from kind of the mass marketing, Robert Schuller kind of lowest common denominator, like scratching the ears of listeners sort of Christianity and kind of embrace the harder long obedience in the same direction type of Christianity where we are together in a local, embodied, offline community, going deep in each other's lives as disciple, you know, fellow disciples of Jesus, spurring each other on, mentoring one another. That's the beauty that that is the meat of Christianity and it always has been.

You know, Alan Kreider's book, I love that you mentioned that the patient for men of the, of the early church, it was One of my favorite books that year, and one of the big ideas of that book is that Christianity grew rapidly in the first few centuries.

Not because it was easy, not because they kind of were seeker sensitive and tried to make Christianity appealing to people by any means necessary, but it grew precisely because it was a high bar of entry. Like the required catechesis process was long and arduous. You weren't invited into worship and baptized until you went through this long process.

And that was the real countercultural nugget I took away from that book. It's like we need to return to that. Like people are hungry to be challenged. It's the do hard things mentality.

That's where, that's where the consumeristic smartphone, iPhone, everything is like low friction, caters to you and all of your whims and all of your convenience. That is not providing flourishing for people. That is not growing. People and people recognize it.

They recognize when they're just scrolling through Instagram or TikTok all day, every day, they feel their souls dying like they're not. They feel that there's no nourishment. And so that's why young people, I think, are coming back to church.

They're hungry to be formed in a true way by an embodied community where there's no filters, there's no screen facades, there's no. There is friction. And that's, that's the rub.

It is going to be harder, but I think it's a challenge that people are willing to take because the desire for growth is, is real and strong.

And I think Christian Christians and churches need to kind of recognize that, you know, a higher bar is actually a good thing for the church's health, but also for individual spiritual formation. You're not going to grow if you're just kind of taking the path of least resistance. That's true of anything in life.

You grow by willingly doing hard things together in community. And I think the churches need to be honest about that and see that as something to celebrate because it's worth it, because Jesus is worth it.

Becoming like Jesus is worth it and any discomfort that comes along the way is worth it.

What do you think, Ivan?

Yeah, I would agree with that. I think there's just a desire to go against the grain in our. In our current culture.

I think the church just going back to the basics of what we've just been saying, there's an opportunity for the church just to continue being the church rather than being embarrassed by being the church.

You know, I was talking with Mark Sayers we were talking about this, this idea of social media and how some younger people are electing not to get on or some are even going back to the flip phones because they do want that. It's not.

I mean, it's a minority, of course, but one of the things he said, and I appreciated it, he said, there's a price to be on social media, but there's also a price not to be, meaning that we see the pressure that we have around us when everyone else is doing it. And I think that's the biggest thing that I see.

While I do see that Gen Z is wanting to do this different part of it, it's still they're not aware of their own dopamine addictions in a way. And the parents have kind of catered to that because it's easier to let the screen do the parenting than themselves and to be engaged.

And especially in the framework we see today of so many different families, just the fractured nature of the institution of the family have we seen gone down. But the church has to recover that. And I like the fact you're saying, let the church be the church the way that it's been there before.

Let it be this formative aspect. Let's recover that. And yet, as many churches are, I think I hear pastors, we want health, we want formation.

The heart is there, but the forms that the church has created in the structures that are there in some way inhibit this kind of transformation. It's like drinking orange juice after you brush your teeth. Yeah. You know, there's a kind of a repulsion because there is a cost involved.

And in some respect, as I said to Christian Smith, we're seeing the results of some bad theology that's drawn out over time.

And what I mean by that, and I think Lewis illustrated this best, CS Lewis, when he was asked the question, how would you sum up your ministry in two words or less? And he said, against reductionism.

And I think what you're seeing is that the gospel has been reduced for so long and you're seeing a recovery of the whole counsel of God, the full story of God.

People are wanting to go back to that, this more formative of creation, fall, redemption and consummation, that if you don't frame it correctly, you're going to have a malformed gospel expression.

And what you're saying is that if I read you right, we have to be careful because we don't realize how these digital tools that we are engaging on, engaging in and these resources are actually forming us. But the embodied community can Help act as a counter catechesis to help reform us in the right direction. Am I correct in that?

Absolutely. Yeah.

I think you're right to kind of pull back a little bit and point to kind of long trends in Protestant evangelicalism and the way that we've kind of turned the gospel, turn Christianity really into a consumer product.

Just to be frank, like, Christianity is something for you in the same way a health supplement is or a pair of jeans is something that enhances your life. It's a life enhancement tool.

It's market theology.

Yeah, it's market.

It's like a market.

It's giving something to the marketplace and using the logic of business in the marketplace to kind of position the product in such a way that it is sold and received as a product. And as we've been talking about, the smartphones, just perpetuate that the smartphone is an icon of capitalism and consumerism.

And so, yeah, I think we need to kind of pull, step back and say, like, how can we reframe Christianity as not just something that you take to enhance your life? Well, one small thing that comes to mind is do everything you can to make sure that people can't just experience church on their phone, right?

Like, just like, take a sermon, you know, on YouTube. Just like I take a, you know, highlight reel of my favorite team's last game on YouTube.

Like, don't give people the option to experience Christianity in the same way that they experience, experience any other consumer product. Like, you have to get out, you have to get off your phone. You have to come to a physical place.

You have to kind of put away your phone for a few hours, ideally, and actually kind of embrace this communal worship experience that is just the furthest thing from a consumer experience that's tailored to me. It's about giving God your attention, to being in awe of him, serving one another, serving the larger community.

You know, serve rather than be served. That, that. Those words, you know, from Scripture, he came to serve, not to be served.

If we can just remember that as like, the essential DNA of Christianity, it's basically saying Christianity is the opposite of consumer logic. Consumer logic is be served right on your terms, as you like it, have it your way, you know, next day, shipping.

Christianity is not about you being served on your terms. It's about coming into a bigger story, a bigger community, and serving others. And so, yeah, I think we need to.

We need to think big picture about what Christianity is. And then downstream from that is how we use technology.

Does it perpetuate that bad theology of Christianity as a product, I would argue a lot of digital technology does and social media does.

And so that's where we have to make sure that we're not using technology in a way that continues this long trajectory of a mutated form of consumer friendly Christianity.

What do you think, Travis?

I'll just say you mentioned how hard this is. The reality is that's true, but we have so many different co belligerence in this conversation and that's been one welcome change in recent years.

And so you can just go down the list of authors like Gene Twenge, author of Igen and a book called Generations. You have Jonathan Haidt, his book the Anxious Generation being commended by Obama, President Obama and others.

So you have then that leading to a number of policies around the world, including Australia banning smartphones for teenagers. So there's just a sea wave of different changes that are not necessarily led by the church or Christians.

It's just a common grace gift that we all have that helps these conversations. So you don't just have to say, well we're just the church and we're curmudgeonly about this topic and we just need to be like, more like the Amish.

Which we do say in the book.

A little bit, which I thought was funny because I grew up with Amish. Just full disclosure, I grew up.

We're big fans of the Amish at tbc. They really kind of if we could.

Be more like the Amish, it'd be better for all of us. So we, we have that, we, we, we have all these non Christians, a lot of sociologists that are seeing the effects.

These are not just theoretical conversations or just some crabby puddle glum Christians who are just sounding the alarm. I mean Neil Postman himself was not a Christian.

And so you have a, A, a generation of, of observers of their culture and culture and technology who are seeing these trends, who are looking at the data and seeing ah, this actually doesn't lead to more human flourishing. They don't have all the answers but they're aware of the problems.

And that helps us as Christians then to come in and say with all this data, with all these resources, say we actually have more solutions than I think the world can offer. They can offer policy proposals. Those are all well and good, they're just not enough.

Oh, totally agree. I mean, because policy proposals only limit, I mean it can limit vice, but it can't enable virtue. And so that to me has its, its limits.

We've talked a lot on, I had James Davison Hunter on We had a lot of discussions on those different aspects of what law can do and how even you can't instrumentalize Christianity for other other things without losing the very essence of what Christianity is. So you have to have it be able to be, to be fully there. That's where you're talking about the Florida Script Society.

Which is why I really appreciate this book and its work. I, I do highly recommend it. I'll be reviewing it for our website and you're going to get several.

We call them drops because we're Apollos watered as a ministry and we put little drops out there. So we, we do recommend it to people and all of those pastors and leaders out there. I, I want to say how much I've enjoyed the conversation.

I enjoy your insights. I do recommend this for all of those who are checking out the resources get the book. It's by crossway scrolling ourselves to death.

It's a highly recommend that will help you equip you and your church to be able to navigate the digital kind of Babylon in which we find ourselves to know how to develop these counter rhythms, counter catechesis.

And it gives you just a whole treasure trove of authors to explore, to get to know and to be familiarizing yourself with as we're all battling this together together. And I, and I really appreciate your contribution to the conversation. So Brett and Ivan, thank you.

Thank you, thank you Travis.

Confession time. I have a love hate relationship with my phone. I feel lost without it. Constantly reaching for it even when I don't want to.

It's a distraction for me a lot. I've had to really discipline myself when I'm out with people. When I hear a buzz, when I. When I can feel the vibration I want to check.

It's just my go to and it makes me sad because I know that it is forming. Me and my children are watching. So I've had to get creative.

Trying to have a no screen Sunday, trying to write things down or trying to use paper and books, little things to help wean me off of it to set a better trajectory. Brett and Ivan have reminded us that this dopamine driven cycle that we are really slave to is literally scrolling ourselves to death.

That's why some have said we need to break up with our phones. Or as Brett said in a the.

Last time I was with him, treat.

It like it's a toddler. Put it to bed before you go to bed or in another room and don't pick it up until you've become begun your morning.

But this just isn't about our phones. It's about how we use digital tools in our churches.

If we're not discerning, we may unintentionally malform people by catering to their habits instead of calling them into deeper discipleship. But here's the good news. The solution is surprisingly embodied. Present. Be with people. Eat together.

Grab a coffee, make a Home Depot run and invite a friend to go with you. Invite someone over to your home. It's ordinary life. That's what it is. Lived in community that helps break the addictive cycle.

Ministry leaders out there, have you ever felt the pressure to compete with technology? Have you ever tried and failed? I'd love to hear your thoughts. I'd love to have you join our conversation on our Facebook page.

And let me encourage you with this Technology is shaping you and your people more than you realize. But you can model a better way. Preach from a physical Bible. Encourage meals together with members of your church. Read scripture together.

Prioritize presence over pixels. That's also why we're launching our next Blueprint cohort, based on my book Kingdom Living in the Modern World.

In six weeks of teaching and discussion, you'll gain practical tools to navigate our cultural moment, a clearer vision of God's Kingdom story, and the encouragement of other leaders on the same journey. Here's what one ministry leader said after joining our cohort. She said, it has shifted how I think about fulfilling mission and ministry.

Where God has called me, I now see more clearly how to live out Christ's commands in my context, with a deeper understanding of what it means to be transformed and to bring transformation for Christ's glory. See, that's the kind of fruit we're after. Spots are limited to just 10, so don't wait. Sign up today.

The link is in the show notes that's kicking off October 1st. That's the next one.

If you've enjoyed today's episode, subscribe so you don't miss future conversations with thought leaders helping us navigate faith, culture and ministry. Visit ApolloSWater.org for resources, speaker requests and links to the books we discuss, including scrolling Ourselves to Death.

And I want to have you come back next week because we're having a very important conversation on Christian nationalism with Georgetown professor Dr. Paul D. Miller. He has experience in the army, the CIA and National Security Council.

And now in the classroom, he brings a unique perspective on one of the most pressing issues facing Christians in America. America today. And until next time, let's keep asking, how are we being formed? And how is God showing up in the places we call home.

Thanks for joining us on today's episode of the Ministry Deep Dive, a podcast of Apollo's Water, the Center for Discipleship and Cultural Apologetics. We hope it helps you thrive in your ministry and in today's culture. Let's keep the conversation going. Check out our ministry at apolloswater.

Org and be sure to sign up for one of our ministry cohorts. Connect with others in the battle.

We need one another.

And remember, keep diving deep and as always, stay watered.

Everybody.