The Church as Social Network

There has been some buzz around the interwebs over the last few days about a post from a professor at Abilene Christian University which purports to explore "How Facebook Killed the Church." In his post, Richard Beck, a professor and experimental psychologist at ACU, writes that the reason Millennials are "leaving the church in droves" is that the social networking function of the church has been replaced by Facebook and other social media. "Church has always been about social affiliation," he writes. "You met your friends, discussed your week, talked football, shared information about good schools, talked local politics, got the scoop, and made social plans ('Let's get together for dinner this week!'). Even if you hated church you could feel lonely without it.

Comparing Gen Y and Millennials, Beck writes, "But Millennials are in a different social situation. They don't need physical locations for social affiliation. They can make dinner plans via text, cell phone call or Facebook. In short, the thing that kept young people going to church, despite their irritations, has been effectively replaced. You don't need to go to church to stay connected or in touch. You have an iPhone."

There's a lot going on in this analysis. For the sake of argument lets assume that Beck is right about the trends and differences between Gen Y and Millennials. And let's even assume that he's right about Facebook and social media doing social networking better than the church has. What then is the root cause of this phenomenon?

I would point to faulty ecclesiology. An ecclesiology that views the church as essentially "about social affiliation" is doomed for precisely the reasons Beck outlines. There is a definite social aspect to what the church is and does. But that doesn't exhaust what we know about the church and the Christian faith, and to reduce it to these social functions seriously distorts our view of Christianity.

Jonathan Malesic, assistant professor of theology at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, PA, recently wrote in the Journal of Markets & Morality (PDF) that the danger of "appealing to Christianity's positive social function is that it substitutes a theological defense of Christianity for a sociological one. It admits that it is right to judge Christianity on its social function and then leaves it up to sociologists to amass empirical evidence for and against Christianity's positive social effects." And when parshioners calculate that their social affiliation needs can be more efficiently served by logging on to Facebook rather than rolling out of bed on Sunday morning, churches be at the losing end of that empirical struggle.

It’s true as Hunter Baker responds in the context of that controversy that Christianity (and the functions of a church) cannot be reduced to social effects. So what's lacking in an ecclesiology that sells itself as a social network? There’s no sense of the marks of the true church, what you get at church that you can’t get anywhere else: proclamation of the Gospel in the preaching of the Word and the right administration of the sacraments. These are things, most especially the sacraments, that you just can’t get from Facebook.

Rob Vischer has responded to Beck's post, and writes,
"To the extent that this argument has merit, I'm guessing it holds more truth for Protestants than for Catholics. In general, my experience of Protestant churches is that the churchgoing experience is more social, especially for young people, than the experience at most Catholic churches, where the experience is more centered on the individual, and where folks tend to flee as soon as Mass is finished (or sooner, in many cases). In any event, it's an intriguing thesis."

As a Reformed Christian, while I may disagree with my Roman Catholic brethren that transubstantiation is the only authentic way to understand sacramental presence, in this sense I fully agree with viewing the “liturgy” as a “center” of the Christian life. If you don't see the sacraments as means of grace (in one form or another), it seems hard to avoid the kind of social networking definition of the church. On that score Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and magisterial Protestant traditions might well have a better leg to stand on than essentially Anabaptistic sacramental and ecclesiological views.

Quite frankly, with the kind of unsacramental emphasis you get in so much evangelicalism it is not surprising that the church becomes a social club, and on that score Facebook does do it much better. But movies entertain better too, and pop music is way better than CCM. So on all of these points the church has to be something more and not just “culture-lite” with a veneer of spirituality. 

If church really is about something deeper, and some deeper form of spiritual community, then something like Facebook need not compete, but indeed can augment and amplify those social relationship that are founded on something greater and not merely ends in themselves.

Beck has written a follow-up post in which he explicates the argument in a bit more detail, "Facebook and the Church Redux." As he writes about the reference to the church, "I wasn't referring to the communion of the saints. I was referring to what we might call 'the Facebook church,' the church-as-affiliation-network. Such a church does indeed exist, for better or worse. And I do think the demise of that church is a good thing. I think it will help move Christianity toward a more missional future."

Comments

[Deacon Michael D. Harmon]

A few years ago I attended a large evangelical gathering in Boston. One of the workshops was devoted to analyzing George Barna's book, Revolution, on the phenomenon of people abandoning formal institutional worship for gatherings in living rooms, many of which had lay leadership instead of ordained clergy (although some ordained clergy were involved in the effort). The workshop leader said (as best I can recall), "We have to face the fact that people can get everything they want from church in a living room as well as in a dedicated building."

And I stood up and said, "What about the sacraments?" The response was something like, "We know those are important in some churches, but that's not what we're talking about here."

Good luck with that, I thought (but didn't say). Caution doth make cowards of us all....

[Brian Foulks]

Great post...I like the direction that you are going and went in this piece. I am writing my dissertation on this very subject witht he premise that the chruch can learn somethings from the concept of facebook. Now from a ecclesiology stand point it can be dangerous but there is somethingto be gained by taking an look at facebook.

I would like to dialog with you more aboutthis subject about your thoughts.

[Clifford Simon]

>>These are things, most especially the sacraments, that you just can’t get from Facebook.<<

Now, hold on... Facebook does have a Sacrament of Marriage! I refer to the Relationship Status button, of course.

[Michael Bauman (not Dr.)]

Let's see, the Church is a hierarchical manifestation of the Holy Trinity, Jesus Body in which we come together to worship, commune with Him and be healed of our sin so that we may become more as He created us to be. It is physical as He was physcial, it is transcendent as He is transcendent.

Facebook is an eqalitarian, superficial means of communicating (at best) about the things of this earth. Unfortunately, it often times provides an avenue for the glorification of our passions during which the dignity and beauty of what it means to be human is ignored and trivialized. If it is used responsibly, our thoughts and feelings become advertising. The human being as ultimate consumer, the human being as 'thing'.

Digital media of all types are a challenge to our humanity and our ability to communicate in profound ways. The nature of the media tends to truncate thought and definitely being. Mass digitial media does not really promote the free, unique human person, but rather creates a huge pressure to conform to the world view of the age.

The Church allows us to participate in the full revelation of the Theanthropos, expanding the knowledge of our own being just by walking in the door. It allows us to really bear one another's burdens and to experience inexpressable joy in person. The Church re-sanctifies human experience and the rest of creation rather than captializing it. The Church sanctifies time and space and being by calling on the Holy Spirit to bless and transform.

What can we learn from Facebook: how to trivilize the personal and intimate nature of salvation to the point that it means nothing; how to turn our communications with one another into yet another means of pushing product, ideology and way of the world?

[Michael Bauman (not Dr.)]

Hey, maybe we could set up "Churchville USA" on Facebook with all the variations we see in ecclesial approach represented. Prizes could be given for the most virtually baptized 'souls'. Virtual visits to virtual prisoners, virtual food given to virtual hungry, virtual care given to virtual sick people: the ultimate SIM game don't ya know. Virtual virtue! Wow, so much to learn and do.

There is already a 'confession app' being used within the RCC for iPhones(absolution not included).

[Hunter Baker]

I have a degree of scholarly confidence that churches will increasingly emphasize communion, responsive readings, etc. as a way to counter the sense that one need not be present in order to be a part. High church coming through!!!

[Michael Bauman (not Dr.)]

Of course, coming to church is not sufficient. We must involve our children in the life of the church in a manner that allows them to take on increasingly adult Christian responsibilities for themselves, the church and the community at large.

That means that we can't facebook our children and call it parenting. We have ourselves to strive for the ontlogical union with Christ that we are call to so that we can transmit that to our children and the world at large. Preach the word, make disciples, not just hold meetings--high church or not.

[Tim Van Helvert]

Having spent most of my life in 'Anabaptist' leaning churches, I've been asking friends a similar question the last few years. If you can attend a church with a satellite church and a 'virtual' pastor who is present only by a feed or DVD recording (and soon with 3-D reality) , what happens if we develop virtual reality churches that we can plug into from our home computer. We could 'virtually' be present at church, interact with each other in a virtual reality, have virtual fellowship, etc. Why not? No one seems to have an answer. Having now moved to a more sacramental worldview and ecclesiology, the answer as to why not seems self-evident.

[paul]

In a few words here is the problem: All of this diminishes and reduces the incarnation. Did Christ come in the flesh? Did he establish a physical church? Since he did both of these things we can't replace them with the virtual. If I were the devil this is exactly what I would want to do. I'm not a Luddite, all I'm saying is that this is a counterfeit.

Also, as a Catholic I was fascinated on Jordan's observation about Catholics being more individual than social. True, we don't have as many ministerial opportunities but we do have a deep sacramental system where we would briefly state: "That which is spiritual takes place in that which is most corporal."

Yet, I would say that it won't be the Catholic Church that is more individual since it seems to me that Protestant churches are more prone to using technology at a much more quicker pace and scale. I'm often bewildered when I attend Protestant services where many are on a laptop during the service and glued to a mega-screen. I think the Catholic Church's position on technology is only for the sake of evangelization.

At any rate, this will be the next ecclesiological hump to address in all three of the Traditions.

[Jordan]

Paul, thanks for the notes. It wasn't my observation that Catholics are more individual than social; I was passing along Rob Vischer's comment. My purpose in passing that along was to introduce the dynamic of comparison between various approaches to worship and the sacraments. I think he had in mind the idea that many Catholics go to Mass to receive the Eucharist and not to socialize as such. I have no idea whether that is accurate or not.

[Diane]

It seems to me that Facebook, while of course not uniform in what it does or how it is used, generally has a strong addictive component. It assuages the loneliness or at least the detachedness that especially characterizes the younger generation, it permits an easy kind of success, it entertains, it challenges in a non-threatening sort of way, etc. Traditional church, if it is authentically experienced, serves to connect the participants to God even as it connects them to each other.

The testpoint would come if both were to be removed. If we could no longer gather formally, we would gather informally. If we could no longer gather informally, we should nonetheless be able to reach out to and be led by the God who will never leave us. By contrast, if the internet and cell service go down (or are doled out only to those who conform to the will of the ones in power), I would venture that the true cost of this new social scaffolding might become fearfully evident.

[Morrice]

I am not trying to offend anyone. After having read the above comments it is disappointing to have to remark that "you just don't get it". The simple fact is Facebook is here to stay . You can either accept it or not. If one looks at it as a tool. A tool to spread the word through stories and experiences then you have grasped the real power of social media. Facebook should not be vilified but rather embraced. It is giving each and everyone of you a unique platform to make your voice heard in a relevant way to affect change. Ignoring another way to communicate with the younger people will only alienate the church and its principals.