Embodied Fellowship: Attending God’s Community 

Introduction

The word fellowship requires definition for a discussion of its digital and physical counterparts. It is the shared interest in God that causes relationships to form in His image. As He exists in a perfect relationship with Himself, His people will naturally follow His example with one another. Fellowship begins and ends with God. Alternatives like participation or friendship are necessary elements within church functions, but they are less complete in their orientation. Participation includes an individual’s involvement without requiring community, and friendship connotes mutual kindness. Neither participation nor friendship adequately demands that Christians relate to one another for God’s sake. 

The conflict of digital and physical fellowship centers around the nature of Christians online. The church can live online, or it can only communicate online. The choice between those options will determine the entire issue. Many modern missiologists advocate the digitization of fellowship because communities are already spending vast amounts of time online. Most missiologists are promoting technology’s widespread use before constructing a thorough, Biblical doctrine of its purpose and method. On the other hand, more traditional Christians relegate the internet’s ability to that of publication. They consider the online world to be the new printing press rather than a new dimension of reality. 

This article will demonstrate that physical church fellowship must orient toward God and intend other believers’ benefit, while digital church fellowship orients toward human convenience and prioritizes personal benefit. God prescribes physical actions for His worship and teaching others—an idea that contradicts many digital claims before and following COVID-19. Digital fellowship attempts to make an interactive community out of high-tech publication platforms, and it does so with individual and consumer motives. The church must physically gather around God, His Word, and His Bride, and every alternative contravenes a God-centered community. 

Physical Fellowship

God creates embodied people that ought to worship in accordance with His design, and He makes them to govern His tangible earth through physical means (Gen. 1:28, ESV). To deny the physical aspects of religion in promotion of the spiritual hearkens back to the early church heresy of Gnosticism. Today a digital society tends toward the Gnostic tyranny of the spiritual because it is entirely disembodied, and online personas fail to fulfill the whole of personal interaction because they are fundamentally pneumatic beings hindered by physicality. Christianity responds to any form of Gnosticism with the claim, “Creation is no error. It is God’s delight.”¹ God upholds every relational element including physical attributes, and the entire New Testament assumes that church communities consist of gathered believers in physical locations on earth. 

God instructs all churches to physically engage in the ordinary means of grace as relational teaching. For example, members confess God’s truth to one another through singing (Col. 3:16). Leeman explains, “Singing is a God-ordained means for praising God and for echoing God’s Word back and forth to one another in a way that engages the whole person—heart, mind, affection, and will.”² A second example is teaching through corporate prayer, another relational act prescribed by Scripture (1 Tim. 2:1, 8; Jas. 5:14). The Christian tradition of prayer meetings teaches and strengthens God’s people as a unit across generations, especially as men exemplify prayer in the church.³ Singing and prayer are irreplaceable within Christ’s gathered community to train God’s people for love and worship. 

The Lord’s Supper and baptism are physical ordinances for the gathered church to observe in obedience to God (Matt. 28:18–20; 1 Cor. 11:17–34). Both are physical offerings of believers to God in communal worship.⁴ Any online attempt at observing these physical ordinances results in confusions between the real and the imagined. For example, one’s online avatar may participate in ordinances without the congregant doing so, and even if the avatar and real person are united in action, the ordinances cannot be self-prescribed on a whim.⁵ John MacArthur echoes the severity of the issue: “I think a Christian should question his own commitment to Christ if he does not observe them. Sometimes we struggle to know exactly what God’s will is on a certain issue, but these ordinances are Christ’s clear commands and, thus, are a vital part of Christian experience.”⁶ God intends His ordinances to physically instruct His people and confess His salvation, and if Scripture’s explicit command fails to cause embodied fellowship, one ought to question what religion is being observed.

God’s church should train people in physical contexts. S. Lance Quinn summarizes the entire New Testament corpus of discipleship passages before concluding, “All believers… are to make disciples of Jesus Christ.”⁷ He emphasizes that Christ and Paul both demonstrate this mandate by physically teaching their disciples through daily examples.⁸ Harry Reeder also points to the examples of Christ and His disciples to argue for discipleship in groups. Peer relationships enrich the discipleship process, and they reduce instruction time for the leader.⁹ Online training severely hampers educational relationships, and it cannot fulfill the communal richness of discipleship as modeled by Christ and the apostles. If a church leader trains young people in the active love of God, it is only reasonable to do so in method as well as word. 

God’s people must value the church in the same way that God does, and they are partly responsible for its wellbeing (1 Cor. 12:6; Heb. 10:24–25). Leeman explains, “A Christian’s new DNA, which he’s received from the Word and Spirit, knows that it now belongs to something larger… His new being longs to be gathered to other believers now—on earth.”¹⁰ Love for God’s people is a clear marker of His regenerating work. Mark Dever and Paul Alexander apply this principle with two mandates. First, the trust required for a functioning Biblical church requires members to spend time with one another as family members interested in one another’s sanctification.¹¹ Second, no such family can function without the regular, in-person attendance of family gatherings.¹² Any rejection of family-style care and physical attendance ought to have a richer alternative that creates the loving church relationships that God requires. However, most people reject such actions for no greater excuse than self care.

Godly church love includes self-sacrifice to promote other people’s wellbeing, and sacrificial love cannot be fulfilled by online fellowship. Digital support groups often reduce to shallow entertainment or pure self-interest. Physical people need physical interactions, so real self-sacrifice will include physically meeting with people. In today’s atomized society, present and active relationships are a true sacrifice. For example, most Christians fear a physical meeting at their front door, and most people want to be left alone in their homes.¹³ In-person friendships require great sacrifice today, but they are mandatory to develop family love within the church. The retreat to online spaces often replaces sacrificial love. 

Members need physical interactions in order to live the Christian life, but pastors also need the corporeal assembly in order to fulfill the Biblical ministry requirements of hospitality and shepherding (1 Tim. 3:2; 1 Pet. 5:2–3). A pastor must nurture everyone in his care through two means. First, he cares for one specific congregation as a shepherd who knows his sheep.¹⁴ He leads, feeds, and corrects his people. Second, he looks to the needs of those outside his church as the Good Samaritan cared for his neighbor.¹⁵ By these services he demonstrates Christ’s love to everyone who sees him. Both kinds of pastoral nurturing require meeting and knowing people in their daily lives—not just as digital avatars. If the church’s work is primarily digital, it lacks true pastoral ministry.

Covid-19 Influence

Most current missiologists and theologians consider COVID-19 to be the digital watershed, but the foundational errors in fellowship began long before the pandemic took place. Donald Bloesch spotted the problem in 1970, prior to the digital world: “Whereas once the glorification of God was considered the primary concern in worship, now it is the fulfillment and welfare of man… People, moreover, are generally spectators rather than participants in the worship celebration.”¹⁶ He found that self-discipline dominated spectator-style sermons while communal church discipline faded away.¹⁷ He suggested that churches recalibrate their fellowship ministries to evangelism, nurturing, giving, prayer, and social action. This way, no one would participate for the sake of consumeristic “bazaars, bingo and dinners” as an alternative to Christocentric fellowship.¹⁸ Bloesch identified the withering of fellowship as shallow participation replacing the Biblical command of community. 

Alfred Poirier saw the root problem of individualism killing church fellowship fourteen years before the pandemic took place. He saw members’ selfish desires gain ascendance over God’s will for His covenant people.¹⁹ These desires directly contradicted Scripture’s repeated view of the church as God’s submissive, unified family.²⁰ He concluded that churches needed a rigorous, family-style covenant membership to treat the poison of modern individualism.²¹ Selfishness was already attacking church fellowship before COVID-19 spread, but covenant safeguards were rarely in place to protect feeble churches from the events of the pandemic. 

The church faced identity threats in the same period. David Wells diagnosed two weaknesses that would surrender the church to salesmen and heretics. First, doctrine shriveled. He argued that evangelicalism slowly downplayed the importance of doctrine to promote Christian unity through the latter half of the twentieth century.²² Rich Biblical teachings decayed into bare conversionism while churches celebrated a simplified unification. Second, the church disappeared. Sales pitches and marketing trends governed the church after the Biblical doctrines that upheld church structure and identity fell away.²³ God’s church became a consumer market. After both tragedies took place, the pandemic presented the digitization of fellowship as the next natural market step. 

Churches were experimenting with digital fellowship by the 2000s. Secular internet communities had been emerging into physical communities since the 1980s and 90s, and online groups would often grow around a set of values before meeting in physical settings as an established community. Websites created phantom societies that would emerge into reality if given enough support. This form of development was unlike the personal style of Biblical formation, and it created relationships parallel to reality among strangers.²⁴ Several groups in recent years demonstrated this exact pattern: Bronies, Furries, and transgender people often told this exact story of their entrance into a physical community. The influence of digital forms was a cause of concern well before the pandemic because digital communities formed around ideologies rather than regulated human relationships. They often valued extremity and sensationalism rather than healthy relational function.

When COVID-19 arrived in the USA, Jonas Kurlberg had partially completed his collected work to discuss the nature of digital ministry. He claimed, “For many who are housebound or have disabilities, digital communications tools have been socially redemptive, bringing a sense of belonging.”²⁵ This argument echoed among proponents of live-streamed worship for years to come, but the digital world would require an unexpected cost of its churches. Kurlberg admitted that the digital world placed many pressures on pastors, even outside of direct digital usage. The digital world already required small bits of data, punchy sound bites, and sermons that could follow the structure of a TED-talk.²⁶ A world without COVID-19 already grappled with the portent of digital fellowship. 

The initial fears surrounding the pandemic’s impact gave many church members permission to abandon the bare participation following the slow end of true fellowship. The withered fellowship of many lonely Christians finally crumbled. Numerous governments commanded all churches to close their doors during the pandemic, and digital fellowship appeared to be the only possible fellowship. Digital participants demonstrated consistently greater health and happiness than those who refused any participation in online gatherings and could not gather in person.²⁷ This seemed to suggest that the internet would contain happier people if religious activities and virtual churches developed in addition to gathered churches. However, there was no evidence of digital fellowship’s superiority to its corporeal counterpart. Furthermore, in-person fellowship was still an option during COVID-19, even when most Christians forsook it without Biblical evaluation. The choice to end services was still a choice—not a necessity—amid the pandemic.

Some argued that COVID’s forceful digitization actually benefitted the church by generating chaos. They argued that disrupting church forms prompted greater democratization and participation among lay members. Christians had to speak up online in order to maintain any semblance of community, so more individual perspectives gained a voice.²⁸ However, even some digital-friendly ministers considered the pandemic digitization to be harmful. First, it harmed believers by prohibiting their meeting together. Internet optimists attempted to share the Lord’s Supper in digital meetings, but this accompanied a strong sense of melancholy among its supporters. The only consolation for them was the ability to do Christian acts with far distant believers.²⁹ Second, pandemic digitization harmed ministers by limiting them to preaching and not full pastoral care. Many grew disgusted with themselves as they increasingly resembled televangelists asking a camera for money, rather than shepherds caring for souls.³⁰ COVID-19 forced some digital optimists to reconsider what thriving fellowship ought to be. 

Dedicated church members learned from COVID-19 that digital fellowship was far inferior to embodied fellowship. One study polled 1,609 congregants from Hinduism, Judaism, and Christianity from October to December of 2020. Members answered questions about their expectations following the pandemic’s end. Those who regularly attended physical gatherings for worship prior to the pandemic were 40 percent more likely to replace digital church attendance with physical attendance when possible.³¹ Members of Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches 

were far more likely to return to in-person meetings because their sacramental view required physical attendance in order to receive God’s grace.³² The other groups were associated with a lower commitment to religious communities.³³ Consistent and active engagement prior to the pandemic generally predicted the dedication to return to physical meetings. 

The thin veneer of participation fell away from many Christians in 2020, but the damage to fellowship was done long before COVID-19. Post-pandemic research showed that COVID-19 did not throw the church into violent change. Attendance and daily prayer rates remained in stasis between 2020 and 2024. This was surprising when paired with the 2010s consistent trend of slowly falling attendance and prayer.³⁴ If the pandemic were a single event to drastically change the structure of fellowship, attendance and prayer rates should have dramatically shifted as society adjusted. However, 63 percent of US adults confessed Christianity in 2019, and the same percentage stood in 2024.³⁵ Christianity declined due more to shifts in generations’ values than any single event.³⁶ The pandemic left no great, lasting changes in Christian fellowship. The missing church attendants had already left true fellowship in years prior to COVID-19, and the pandemic, if anything, stabilized church attendance and prayer. 

Fellowship continued to compete with digital participation among Christian thinkers because the core arguments were neither founded nor resolved in the events of 2020. Rei Lemuel Crizaldo suggested that the real home of the church was already online: “Social media has already become the environment in which Christianity shall ‘move and have its being’. As the next generation of worshippers relentlessly Tweet even inside the sacred halls of God’s sanctuary, social media is now the stage upon which we forge our spirituality and theology.”³⁷ According to Crizaldo’s reasoning the church needed to exist online because Christians used digital social media for Christian messaging while they gathered in church fellowship. However, a traditional Christian would have retorted that simply doing an action is not sufficient justification for that action. 

Embodied fellowship strongly benefitted Christians in the days following the pandemic. An analysis of the 2021 Crime, Health, and Politics Survey found that the digital attendance of religious services produced no measurable improvement in mental distress or self-rated health.³⁸ The same analysis suggested that the frequency of in-person attendance accompanied lower mental distress and self-rated health.³⁹ It concluded, “We speculate that the lack of sensory experience in online religious services and the lost opportunities for physical connection with co-congregants may help to explain these patterns.”⁴⁰ Physical meeting for the worship of God caused measurably improved wellbeing among its adherents during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Digital Fellowship

Online content, whether streaming platforms or social media, always consists of creators and viewers. The greatest of engagement centers, like chat rooms and comment sections, are made of creators and viewers. Each individual attempts to fashion a small piece of content worthy of a reaction. Proponents of digital fellowship evaluate discipleship by its quantity of reactions. For instance, the number of comments would indicate the success of ministry content.⁴¹ Some digital strategists are honest enough to elucidate their process of ministry in terms of market efficiency. For example, David Bourgeois calls for a digital ministry to target a specific demographic as its audience and users, and he calls an open-target ministry lazy.⁴² Online ministers consider the failure to identify and secure an audience as complete mission failure. The process of digital ministry ultimately values high consumption as the sign of success. 

The creator-viewer dynamic of the internet is not negative in every element related to ministry, any more than the relationship between author and reader is negative in ministry. Albert Mohler avoids terms of discipleship, fellowship, or even teaching when he recommends Christian leaders to establish an online presence. Instead, he promotes digital usage to share promotional information for things that already exist in the real world. For example, a digital presence is necessary to communicate a personal or organizational set of values.⁴³ In this view an online presence should be treated as a publishing house. No reasonable Christian leader would suggest a book-based church or journal publication church, so social media is best used in terms of a new form of book or journal article. Mohler limits the digital world to service the real world rather than replace it.

Digital fellowship and digital publishing are disparate concepts, but the distinction is almost never explicitly present in arguments about churches online. For example, one argument for the church use of cyberspace points to benefits of the internet, like communication and outreach, while warning against digital abuses, like shallow engagement.⁴⁴ A parallel approach uses the same argument structure to replace historic Christian doctrine itself: “Postmodern culture challenges the church’s epistemological assumptions, requiring the adaptation of its theological language and practices.”⁴⁵ Both examples could maintain orthodox Biblical doctrine and an online presence if they could differentiate fellowship from publishing. The tension between positive and negative online effects vanishes if the internet is treated only as a publisher of immense volume and high technology. Furthermore, if the internet is treated as a publisher, changing theology to fit a digital world is unnecessary. 

The creating-viewing dichotomy of online publications cannot fulfill Biblical fellowship. At best it limits people to knowing information about the Bible and Christian doctrine as viewers. Kurlburg’s opening illustration claims that the vast screen time of culture demands a digitization of Christian evangelism.⁴⁶ Jason Thacker echoes the same point by pointing to phone usage as evidence of discipleship opportunities. He suggests that influencing the digital world will turn self-centered minds to be Christ-centered.⁴⁷ Jones contends that entire churches ought to become digital because young people are living online.⁴⁸ Bourgeois uses the phrases “information systems” and “ministry framework” interchangeably when he switches from his tech background to ministry application.⁴⁹ All four authors assume that the Christian life may flower from data transfers rather than close, ongoing, personal relationships. They fail to mention the value of priestly believers aiding one another’s sanctification. Believers must be Christ-centered, but they must be so in a community-based manner. 

Theologians that support digital communities as equal to in-person fellowship sometimes admit that the livestream format creates a consumeristic performance dynamic. Yale’s Marquand Chapel Dean Maggie Dawn only partially used her livestream format in her time in ministry because of its negative effects on the physical gathering. She now cautions that no digital ministry will be complete without personal pastoral care via online chat rooms or virtual conversations.⁵⁰ Dawn recommends the application of digitized alternatives, but she personally refuses to atomize pastoral care and the fellowship of laypeople into isolated screen-users. Like many other digital-friendly theologians she emphasizes human flourishing as the ultimate goal of church fellowship.⁵¹ As long as the members are living peacefully, she is satisfied. However, her evaluation method centers on humanity rather than God’s explicit will. Even if she could create human thriving with digital fellowship, she would do so to the neglect of Scripture. 

The most common argument for digital fellowship rests on the individual’s wellbeing. This approach looks for things like flourishing, reconciliation, and hospitality for individuals while insisting that they be done on the individual’s terms.⁵² Others cite the vast behavioral and environmental benefits that often accompany religion as an apologetic for the full digitization of Christian communities.⁵³ To them, if the real world is online, then Christians ought to improve it by planting digital churches. These ministers issue no interpersonal call to holiness in their words or actions. Dever and Alexander reject the defense through human flourishing because it focuses on human benefit and thereby makes an idol of humanity. They remind that the Gospel is God’s work of “making a name for Himself in the world by gathering a people and separating them to Himself for the spread of His fame to the nations.”⁵⁴ A Christian community formed out of human interest is no Christian community at all. 

Most who embrace digital fellowship have to redefine the church in consumeristic terms, and they often assume that the church is formed by individual people’s interest in Christ. It is true that the church should be interested in knowing Christ, but the church is not primarily an individualistic endeavor. Jones redefines it as “the global community of people who follow Christ and help others discover and follow Christ.”⁵⁵ With this definition she abandons the ancient Christian idea that churches are local gatherings operating in submission to God’s command. She attempts to appease embodied fellowship adherents by calling her work a hybrid of digital and in-person, with the ultimate goal of reaching embodied interactions.⁵⁶ Her approach limits church function to the individual acquisition of Jesus, and it ultimately admits that digital fellowship cannot replace the value of embodied fellowship.

Conclusion

Physical fellowship honors God because it embraces His design for His people. Embodied churches need to meet together to observe the ordinary means of grace like singing, prayer, and discipleship. These actions give God His due from a unified Bride, and they instruct fellow believers in the practice of religion. Furthermore, the ordinances of the Gospel physically communicate Christ’s efficacy as Savior as believers demonstrate for one another that God has truly saved them. The church also creates family bonds of love and trust when physically gathered together. This gathering of Christian fellowship extends beyond church services into daily lives of the church. 

The pandemic of 2020 challenged Christians to reconsider their beliefs about fellowship and participation. Individualism and consumerism had already overtaken many churches, so pandemic isolation gave a new opportunity for online convenience. However, society generally maintained a consistent attendance rate following the COVID outbreak. The decline of Christianity ended, and church attendance entered stasis. Furthermore, devout Christians developed renewed interest in physical church fellowship. The pandemic caused researchers to see how valuable embodied relationships are to humanity, thus admitting the value of Biblical, embodied fellowship. The debate between digital and physical fellowship continued, but the arguments remained similar to those prior to COVID-19. 

Digital fellowship consists of creators and viewers rather than shepherds and their flocks. Online ministers become mass marketers attempting to distribute Christian information. They may not seek personal financial gain, but their methods closely follow the consumer strategies of secular markets. Digital-friendly churches sometimes recognize that a livestream cannot pretend to fulfill pastoral care, but even these often create digital alternatives to benefit people rather than honor God. Apologists for online fellowship generally speak about audience needs rather than the commands of God. 

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About the Author: Micah Borck lives in eastern North Carolina where he teaches high schoolers about God, His will, and His work. He wants to pass down the biblical faith to diligent saints. (This article is adapted from a paper written for Ministry and Leadership I at Welch College, 2026.)

1. Jason Byassee and Andria Irwin, Following: Embodied Discipleship in a Digital Age (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2021), 53. 
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2. Jonathan Leeman, Word-Centered Church: How Scripture Brings Life and Growth to God’s People (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2017), 145. 
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3. Donald G. McDougal, “The Pastor’s Prayer Life—the Ministry Side,” in Rediscovering Pastoral Ministry: Shaping Contemporary Ministries with Biblical Mandates, ed. John MacArthur (Nashville, TN: W Publishing Group, 1995), 186–7. ↩︎
4. Annette Potgieter, “Digitalisation and the Church–A Corporeal Understanding of Church and the Influence of Technology,” Stellenbosch Theological Journal 5, no. 3 (2019): 566. ↩︎
5. Potgieter, “Digitalisation,” 568–9 ↩︎
6. John MacArthur, “Observing Ordinances,” in Rediscovering Pastoral Ministry, 351. ↩︎
7. S. Lance Quinn, “Discipling,” in Rediscovering Pastoral Ministry, 326. ↩︎
8. Quinn, “Discipling,” 331–2. 
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9. Harry L Reeder and David Swavely, From Embers to a Flame: How God Can Revitalize Your Church (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2008), 178. 
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10. Leeman, Word-Centered Church, 87. 
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11. Mark Dever and Paul Alexander, The Deliberate Church: Building Your Ministry on the Gospel (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005), 46. ↩︎
12. Dever and Alexander, Deliberate Church, 47. ↩︎
13. Byassee and Irwin, Following, 106–7. 
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14. David C. Deuel, “The Pastor’s Compassion for People,” in Rediscovering Pastoral Ministry, 225. ↩︎
15. Deuel, “Compassion,” 226. 
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16. Donald G. Bloesch, The Reform of the Church (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1970), 24. ↩︎
17. Bloesch, Reform, 85. 
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18. Ibid., 98. ↩︎
19. Alfred Poirier, The Peacemaking Pastor: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Church Conflict (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2006), 51. ↩︎
20. Poirier, Peacemaking Pastor, 91. ↩︎
21. Ibid., 282. ↩︎
22. David Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008), 7–8. ↩︎
23. Wells, Courage, 11. ↩︎
24. Heidi Campbell and Patricia Calderon, “The Question of Christian Community Online: The Case of the ‘Artist World Network,’” Studies in World Christianity 13, no. 3 (2007): 263–4. ↩︎
25. Jonas Kurlberg, “Introduction: Missio Dei in a Digital Age,” in Missio Dei in a Digital Age, ed. Jonas Kurlberg and Peter M. Phillips (London, UK: SCM Press, 2020), 5. ↩︎
26. Kurlberg, “Introduction,” 7. ↩︎
27. Justin Thomas, Mohammad Amin Kuhail, and Fahad AlBeyahi, “The Metaverse, Religious Practice and Wellbeing: A Narrative Review,” Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 27, no. 1 (2024): 60. ↩︎
28. Erkki Sutinen and Anthony-Paul Cooper, “Interactive Technologies, Missio Dei and Grassroots Activism,” in Missio Dei in a Digital Age, 127. ↩︎
29. Byassee and Irwin, Following, 148–9. ↩︎
30. Ibid., 156. ↩︎
31. Christopher Justin Jacobi, Maria Andronicou, and Brandon Vaidyanathan, “Looking Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic: Congregants’ Expectations of Future Online Religious Service Attendance,” Religions 13, no. 6 (2022): 7. ↩︎
32. Jacobi, Andronicou, and Vaidyanathan, “Looking Beyond,” 9. ↩︎
33. Ibid. 
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34. Gregory Smith, Alan Cooperman, Becka Alper, Besheer Mohamed, Chip Rotolo, Patricia Tevington, Justin Nortey, Asta Kallo, Jeff Diamant, and Dalia Fahmy, “Decline of Christianity in the U.S. Has Slowed, May Have Leveled Off: Findings from the 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study” (Pew Research Center, 2025), 10. ↩︎
35. Smith, Cooperman, Alper, Mohamed, Rotolo, Tevington, Nortey, Kallo, Diamant, and Fahmy, “Decline of Christianity,” 20 ↩︎
36. Ibid., 14. 
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37. Rei Lemuel Crizaldo, “Digital Theology: Practising Local Theology in an Age of Global Technology,” in Missio Dei in a Digital Age, 56. ↩︎
38. Laura Upenieks, Terrence D. Hill, Gabriel Acevedo, and Harold G. Koenig, “‘Electronic Church’ 2.0: Are Virtual and In-Person Attendance Associated with Mental and Physical Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic?” Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review 84, no. 3 (2023): 315. ↩︎
39. Upenieks, Hill, Acevedo, and Koenig, “‘Electronic Church,’” 315. ↩︎
40. Ibid., 316. ↩︎
41. Nona Jones, From Social Media to Social Ministry: A Guide to Digital Discipleship (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Reflective, 2020), 26. ↩︎
42. David T. Bourgeois, Ministry in the Digital Age: Strategies and Best Practices for a Post-Website World (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2013), 59. ↩︎
43. Albert Mohler, The Conviction to Lead: 25 Principles for Leadership that Matters (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 2012), 177–8. ↩︎
44. Victor Adikwu, “Christian Theology and Evangelism in Cyberspace: Opportunities and Challenges,” Bouesti Journal of Humanities 1, no. 1 (2026): 440. ↩︎
45. Antonius Natan, David Ming, and Jonathan D. James, “Digitalization and Church Leadership: Challenges and Opportunities for Contemporary Evangelism,” Jurnal Teologi 6, no. 1 (2025): 6. 
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46. Kurlberg, “Introduction,” 1. ↩︎
47. Jason Thacker, Following Jesus in a Digital Age (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing, 2022), 147. ↩︎
48. Jones, Social Media, 12. ↩︎
49. Bourgeois, Digital Age, 51–52. 
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50. Maggie Dawn, “Worship, Community, and Missio Dei in a Digital Age,” in Missio Dei in a Digital Age, 185–6. 
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51. Dawn, “Missio Dei,” 191. ↩︎
52. John Drane and Olive Fleming Drane, “Amusing Ourselves to New Life? Strategic and Pastoral Reflections on Digital Media and Contemporary Spirituality,” in Missio Dei in a Digital Age, 162–3. ↩︎
53. Thomas, Kuhail, and AlBeyahi, “Metaverse,” 59. ↩︎
54. Dever and Alexander, Deliberate Church, 56. ↩︎
55. Jones, Social Media, 20. ↩︎
56. Ibid., 32–33. ↩︎