Opening the Digital Front Door (2023)

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from the just-released book by James Emery White, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church in a Post-Christian Digital Age (Zondervan). It’s available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Christian Book Distributors, The Grounds Bookstore and Café, and bookstores nationwide. You can get more information HERE.

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More than 30 years ago, I wrote a book titled Opening the Front Door: Worship and Church Growth, for the Convention Press of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). The thesis was simple but, for the time, provocative: the front door of the church was no longer Sunday school but the weekend service. For decades, Sunday school had been enshrined as the front door of the church, the church’s evangelistic engine, and the experience to which members invited people to attend. But my research of the SBC showed that beginning in 1971, more people were attending the weekend service than Sunday school. Further, the weekend service was the starting point for exploring the church.

Visitors didn’t begin with Sunday school, they began with the weekend worship service.

Though it’s essential that we keep the weekend-service door open, the primary front door of the church has changed again. It’s no longer the weekend service but an online experience. Whether it’s a visit to a website or an online campus, the front door is digital. If I were to write a similar book today, I would title it Opening the Digital Front Door. Here are the new assumptions that come with this revelation:

First, people want to check a church out online before attending in person, just like they want to check everything else out first online. Second, they may attend or view online for months before visiting in-person (if they visit at all). Third, they want to interact online. Finally, they are accustomed to being served digitally in almost every way.

It doesn’t matter whether you like these four assumptions or even agree with them. They characterize our mission field, and we will either engage people how they want to be engaged or we will fail to reach them for Christ. This is the only way the vast majority will even consider being engaged. We will either open that front door or leave it firmly closed to them.

So how do we open the new front door to people?

It begins by embracing how they are willing to explore the Christian faith (not to mention your church), their preferred systems of delivery (how they want to receive what you have to offer), and the new nature of communication through social media. Your church’s relationship with the unchurched now begins online.

This raises an important question: How do you create an online presence that removes unnecessary barriers to full online exploration and engagement?

We are used to thinking of barriers to in-person weekend services, such as style (music and architecture), comfort (casual dress), accessibility of the message (contemporary translation of the Bible), and cultural relevance (sermon topics, use of film or drama). Are those barriers relevant to digital exploration? Yes and no. Most still are because part of people’s exploration, if you engage them, includes viewing a service or a message online or listening to a podcast. But digital exploration is so much more, and the barriers we need to remove are so much more involved.

The biggest barrier is if you don’t even have a digital presence: you don’t have a website, aren’t on social media, don’t offer your services or messages online, and don’t use digital media to reach out. The majority of individuals who come to an in-person service for the first time have already explored the church online. If you are not online to allow that exploration, you have closed your front door. Don’t expect them to come in person.

But let’s assume you have a digital front door, whether it is a website, social media, or both. Here are some questions about just how open your door is. Who is your website designed to serve? For most churches, it is designed for the members and active attenders of the church. What about your Facebook page? Is that for your church community or for those who might be exploring your church? What about your Instagram account? Twitter feed? It’s not that you can’t make posts related to the life of your church or that your website can’t serve up information necessary for your church community. But what will reading it and seeing it be like for someone who is not a part of your church family? What about someone who is not a Christian but may be open to exploring or trying to understand the Christian faith?

The point is to think of your digital presence as your front door.

Is your website’s homepage for the first-time guest? Are the primary links designed to serve someone exploring your church digitally? Is your Facebook page inviting and monitored, serving those who post questions? Is what you post on Instagram engaging and intriguing? If someone clicks and scrolls their way through your online presence, is there something that makes them stay and click and scroll further instead of moving on to something else?

They will give you only a handful of seconds. According to research by Microsoft, the average attention span dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to just 8 seconds in 2015. Think about your in-person events. You have signage, greeters, and welcome areas, and create an atmosphere and experience designed to serve the needs of first-time guests. You should take just as much care with your online presence.

At Mecklenburg Community Church, we put an enormous amount of research and intentionality into our website (mecklenburg.org). The main page is designed for a first-time guest. When you land on the page, you are met by a reel of images that immerse you in the feel of the church. Main tabs include “Attend,” “Connect,” “Serve,” and the “More Info” button that will immediately link you to some of the history of the church. Links to our next live event and the online campus are prominent. Beyond this are ways to follow and stay connected through social media. The goal is simple: the website is not simply the front door, but the first impression.

Make sure it’s a good one.

James Emery White

Sources

This has been excerpted from James Emery White, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church in a Post-Christian, Digital Age (Zondervan), order here.

About the Author

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and a former professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age, is now available on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit churchandculture.org, where you can view past blogs in our archive, read the latest church and culture news from around the world, and listen to the Church & Culture Podcast. Follow Dr. White on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @JamesEmeryWhite.

The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and a former professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, Hybrid Church: Rethinking the Church for a Post-Christian Digital Age, is now available on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit churchandculture.org where you can view past blogs in our archive, read the latest church and culture news from around the world, and listen to the Church & Culture Podcast. Follow Dr. White on X, Facebook and Instagram at @JamesEmeryWhite.