Matthew: As always, I thank you so much for taking the time; it is precious. I really appreciate how you come across in your words and in your presentations. There’s this authentic gentleness that comes through. For me as a listener, it’s a welcome change. I really appreciate the spirit that always accompanies you, which is not just yours but also the Spirit of God, so thank you so much for that.
Felicia: Thanks, Matthew. I appreciate that.
Matthew: It’s easy to think about technology affecting people in general, but because pastors have this unique, special kind of relationship with people and life and training, teaching, helping humanity to flourish in general, I want to be able to think about questions that help them flourish. As a sociologist, you do think a lot about how technology creates potential issues, so how do you think technology affects pastors specifically?
Felicia: My mind goes in lots of directions on this one. Because I focus on communication and media technologies in my research, my first thought goes to how it is that, at least in American society, with any new communication technology that is invented, it seems like the American church has always viewed those technologies as a way of spreading the gospel, because it is a communication technology. Here we have this tool that can enhance our capacity to share the gospel with people and so there’s a default of optimism and enthusiasm, which is super interesting to me. You see that with radio and television and certainly with the internet. When it comes to the life of pastors, it’s a given to have to consider how to employ communication technologies in the ways that one conducts ministries or shares sermons and so forth.
I think that’s an interesting cultural conversation in American society. My other thought goes to a broader way in which technologies get integrated into our landscape––that is, our living landscape––so the ways we experience life are increasingly mediated by our communication and information technologies of the internet. To the extent that pastors are trying to shepherd and minister to people living in that kind of environment or living in a particular experience of life, which in our case is heavily mediated by technology, then pastors inevitably have to contend with what that landscape is. This is rooting back to, again, a broader point that I learned from my graduate advisor, James Hunter, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, who speaks about how our faith is socially situated. Even though the truths of our faith may be eternal (same in the past and the present and in the future), the way we actually experience those truths will vary historically because of the particular landscapes we happen to inhabit. Being a Christian in 1960 and trying to be faithful and reading the Bible and singing hymns––all of those practices will be the same now, but we experience it differently because we’re in a different kind of landscape.
Matthew: You mentioned about optimism being the default. I was just reading John Dyer’s book People of the Screen and he and others talk about the evangelical assumption that technology’s a good thing and if it will help spread Jesus, then go for it and use it, and not consider how the tool is going to shape the user. We think the tool is somehow neutral. It’s not and so that aspect of optimism being the default, I think we all should think about that more.
You talk about permanent connectivity. I think because pastors and leaders are dealing with people more regularly than the average person, I would think they would have even more of an issue with permanent connectivity. First I wonder if you can mention about the permanent connectivity and then how pastors can deal with it more. And I was thinking about this question this morning, and I thought if Jesus had an iPhone he might turn it on airplane mode a whole lot more. Jesus walked away from crowds, took time apart, and took the Sabbath off, and so to think we should be permanently connected is almost anti-God.
Felicia: The idea behind permanent connectivity is that we live in a time when we have normalized the expectation of being online or checking our phones and that being permanently connected isn’t even just a matter of the actual behaviors or actions of checking our devices, but it is actually increasingly a state of consciousness. Even when we’re not actually looking at a screen, a part of our spirit or mind might be dedicated to thinking about or wondering what the new post is or if someone commented on what we posted or what new email or message is in our device or inbox now. A part of our spirit is distracted from where our bodies are and what activity we may be actually engaged in at the time.
When it comes to pastors and permanent connectivity, I like the kind of thought experiment of what Jesus would do with an iPhone. I think it is interesting to think about how it is that permanent connectivity has become something that is also wrapped up in the responsibilities and obligations that we have in our careers or in our social roles. One of the arguments I make is that what makes permanent connectivity so compelling is that we feel like to be a good leader or a good pastor actually obligates us to be permanently connected, that is endemic now to that role, and I think that is actually one of my greatest concerns, the ways in which our digital obligations get enmeshed into our social, personal or professional obligations. That really requires each of us to think long and hard and get re-centered into what our personal or professional obligations actually are, and to not just take for granted those sorts of normalized expectations. I don’t know if that’s getting at what you’re asking.
Matthew: Yes.
Felicia: I’m just trying to think anecdotally when I’m thinking about Sunday morning, pastor—like, I know pastors wear lots of hats and they live deeply into Monday through Saturday and all the pastoral and ministerial work they do as well—but let’s just talk about Sunday pastor, the pastor that’s giving the sermon, that’s leading worship. I think it would be interesting to see pastors on Sundays talk about or speak from their own experience of grappling with permanent connectivity and those expectations in the same way they might talk about other sorts of personal struggles or journeying that they have been on in their life, and how that has been a part of their own spiritual journeying as a way to invite others into that same kind of process.
Joy: Yes.
Felicia: At the end of the day, our digital lives are a matter of Christian discipleship.
Matthew: Discipling is a big topic. It’s connected to the idea that in order for humans to flourish, they have to have friendships. A number of stats about pastors have come out recently, and one of them was something like 70% of pastors suffer with developing personal friendships. We already have this issue of friendship is really important and pastors, who in many ways have an effect on leading us, if they don’t have friendships, that’s gonna be a problem. Add to that that they are already held to higher expectancies and then add to that social media. How do you think social media affects pastors?
Felicia: When you mention social media, are you saying that the pastors are on social media actively, or what’s the scenario you’re imagining there?
Matthew: Yeah, probably. I would assume that more pastors are on social media now than they were before, and maybe they would separate between their public and personal accounts—and maybe that would actually be a problem because they would have the public persona and then the personal persona and so everybody else sees them differently. I don’t think social media contributes to deep friendships. With pastors expected to be on social media, to be more connected, I’m wondering what potential issues they would deal with even more than the average person with social media.
Felicia: It would be interesting to find out, and I don’t know if there’ve been studies done on whether pastors have professional accounts and personal accounts on social media. That seems like actually a pretty good idea to me. For any profession that requires online engagement, media is an incredibly brutal space if you’re seeking deep relationships because it is so performative. But at the same time, what I find interesting about the question is––that what social media and online spaces can be good for is––it can be a space where people can meet others, people in a marginalized group or a group that tends to find themselves to be alone in their local context for whatever variety of reason, whether it’s by race or sexuality or religion, whatever it is, and in this case, maybe profession. Social media can actually be a really interesting space to network and find people that are actually dealing with the same things you’re dealing with, and you can start conversations and find groups of people who care about the same things you care about or are experiencing the same thing. That’s where social media could be really helpful in that first point of contact, the first point of, “oh wow, there are these other people that are struggling and processing and experiencing what I’m experiencing and maybe this could be the beginning of a friendship.” But then for pastors, the next step is to move that relationship into a different sphere off of social media. You’re not just either in a space where that tends to reward shouting at each other or merely presenting perfect pictures of ourselves, but moving into a different space whether that’s locally or by phone, or, if you’re geographically distant, other ways of engaging each other so that those deep friendships and the kinds of companioning that so many pastors need, so many leaders need, can actually flourish in another space.
Matthew: I appreciate the fact that you brought that up, because it’s not all negative, but it can be depending on our space. That point you made about social media allowing for a separate space that someone doesn’t necessarily think about and it has been created specifically through technology, it’s allowed that space to be opened up and that’s potentially really good. That can contribute to flourishing. Are there any other ways that you think about positive aspects of technology, especially with pastors?
Felicia: It can be a space where you can have access to resources that might be beyond what your normal kind of bounded networks of community give you. For example, if you’re an evangelical pastor who, for whatever reason, becomes led to and interested in Jewish traditions and what Jewish practices can lend to fostering spirituality, and let’s say where you are geographically and the circles of people that you went to school with and that you tend to collaborate with really don’t have much experience with that at all, it could be a space where you could find other people to talk to or other resources much more easily than merely Googling something. To me, it’s a starting point.
I’m not on social media in any functional way, but there is a group, the Asian American Christian Collaborative, that I’m on an email list with that I would not have access to without the digital. For me, it’s this incredible resource to hear from and meet and talk to other Asian American Christians. I live in California, so people think that I’m probably surrounded by Asian Americans, but I live in Santa Barbara and I’m not, so it’s actually a rich space in which to learn and meet other people. At times, it is a lifeline for me and so I can imagine the same thing for various pastors out there with their varying kind of life experiences or interests or what they’re being led to engage in. Online space can be fruitful in those ways.
Joy: I was thinking, in line with what you said about connecting with people and other experiences and bringing it back to the concept of friendship, there have been interesting studies about friendship and when it is mediated through technology or in person. If I may ask you about embodiment, I wonder how we navigate embodiment through technology. Is it a hindrance, or is there any way that it can be a benefit?
To refer to something that you quoted from Tish Harrison, she says, “If the church does not teach us what our bodies are for, our culture certainly will. If we don’t learn to live the Christian life as embodied beings, we will learn a false gospel, an alternative liturgy of the body.” Can you speak to how that may relate to pastors and the value of being able to connect with a group that they can’t meet with physically?
Felicia: What I would want to emphasize with the possibilities that are available with finding new networks or points of contact through online spaces is that I do tend to think of them as better than nothing, but second best, and second best to an in-person space or engagement. It’s better than nothing; like, if I’ve got nothing, at least I have this. But, if I had a chance to be together with a group of Asian American Christians, boy, I’d be there! And I would prefer that. Just this past weekend I had that very experience, where I actually drove down to Los Angeles and met up with people from this group for the first time, which was really fantastic.
The value of presence that comes through our embodied engagement with each other (especially in the context of friendship) is a part of what makes being human so glorious, that there is something very powerful and mysterious about being able to be present with each other, whether we are talking or not talking.
What’s unfortunate is that people’s church experiences teach them that the main thing––especially what our young people learn about our bodies––is that our bodies are matters of moral purity and that’s it. It’s only about sex and only about drugs and alcohol and so forth, and therefore we tend to have a fairly impoverished or thin imagination about what our bodies are for, even though there are plenty of scriptures that talk about the body as a temple. And even when it’s as a temple we only talk about it in terms of purity.
I totally agree with Tish that we live in a society that is very body-centric in the sense that it’s a celebration of the lack of bodies, that our bodies are not necessary, it’s all mind. This is where it’s important, as Tish says, for the church to be presenting living into a much richer imagination about what our bodies are for, and what our senses and sensory experiences are for and how we experience God through our bodies day to day.
All that to say, as people who live in American society at least, we are very aware of our bodies, we are just living into distorted stories and imaginations about what they are.
Joy: That thin imagination that you mentioned, that really stands out to me.
Matthew: Especially, it seems to me there’s a fullness that isn’t often tapped into when it comes to the body. Sometimes Protestant evangelical types, it’s fair to say—perhaps less of the Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox, though I might be wrong—have this focus on purity and holiness where the body is shown to be something that’s supposed to be holy, it’s supposed to be pure, though sometimes purity maybe too often can be seen as…
Joy: An absence.
Matthew: Yes, exactly! It’s an absence of life! It’s an absence instead of the body is made for all these things that can be enjoyed, that can be experienced, and that’s good. God wants that. It’s a beautiful thing. To have the fullness of that experience, people should think about that, but leaders should help facilitate the thinking about the importance that our bodies are made to be enjoyed and to enjoy creation.
Felicia: Yeah. That’s right, and the emphasis in certain Christian traditions on belief over the rest of our human experiences can accentuate our inability to realize what our bodies do. I was thinking about the contrast you were making between particular evangelical Protestant traditions and more Orthodox, Catholic, liturgical traditions, because in the traditional liturgical faith traditions you have an employment of your body in so many of your worship practices––you know, the kneeling, the standing, the bowing and the fragrance––and so, there is an engagement of one’s sensory and bodily experiences in worship in those traditions that doesn’t quite exist in other Christian traditions that are much more focused on what propositions you ascend to in your mind, or what you’re supposed to learn from the sermon and then live out.
Matthew: This is something where, for some of the Protestant mega-church people who don’t have as much focus on the liturgy, the Eucharist, the idea that you can go to church online could be much easier. Whereas for the people who practice the liturgy––which as you mentioned is connected deeply, irreplaceably with the body––to go to an online church… well, I know I have some Anglican friends, some Catholic friends, and when they absolutely couldn’t go, you could almost say it wasn’t a discomfort that they experienced, it was a form of pain. Like, they were not able to flourish properly because they couldn’t partake in those services. With this online thing, and churches having to deal with more and more people wanting to access things online, hopefully it’s changing, because that’s not the fullness of the body of Christ, I don’t think.
Felicia: This is a conversation I have with my students every year—it makes it sound like forever—since the pandemic. One of the things I find that the pandemic did for a lot of, at least my students and maybe other young people, is it made them wonder why they need to get up on Sundays and get out of their beds and go somewhere to “do church” if they can go to YouTube and, quite frankly for many of them, find better pastors who give better sermons, not better pastors, but more compelling sermons. To me, that’s a very legitimate question and it forces church leaders to ask a very hard question: what are we doing on Sundays that is persuasive and compelling enough to have someone drive twenty minutes and participate in the life of the church together rather than consume whatever content online?
I don’t know what the answer is completely to that question, but it is funny; when I ask my students what would get them out of bed and what kind of church Sunday worship experience would compel them and I tell them that they can really go big, like, we can go beyond all the kind of existing models… Because, I agree with you, Matthew, that certainly in the traditions that celebrate the Eucharist—or we could go towards traditions like the charismatic or Pentecostal traditions—being present to experience the Holy Spirit is quite essential. There are our existing faith traditions where bodily participation is quite significant to the experience of worshiping and participating in the life of the church. I always remember what one of them told me, which I thought was hilarious, was they said, “I’ve got one word for you, Dr. Song: tailgate.”
Joy: A what?
Felicia: Like a tailgate party. They’re like, “it should be like a tailgate experience.”
Matthew: Oh!
Felicia: And they were like, “so you start off with food and gathering and people bring chairs and you sit for hours and you’re tailgating. And that’s all in preparation for the game, the worship service, the formal time and then afterwards you get back into your groups and you process what happened with food and barbecue and drinks.” And they were kind of being playful, but that was a really interesting idea to me because of its ritual, but it’s also very organic that people would gather and anticipate and then go to “the event,” the time when everyone is formally gathered together, but then there would be this organic time afterwards as well that would be celebratory. I don’t know; it was quite beautiful.
Matthew: I haven’t watched this movie, The Jesus Revolution, but I’ve heard raving reviews from people especially of that generation who went through it. I remember my parents were heavily involved in that and they loved the aspect that it was like it was deeply spiritual, but it didn’t disconnect between spiritual and everyday life. They would talk about going into a house where you would eat and you would share and you would sing a little bit without professionality––I mean, it could be professional, but it was really organically put together. You mention this tailgating, and I wonder, if with the Jesus people, if that’s what they had, if that’s what it was.
Felicia: Completely. Yes. Yeah, I’ve heard really good things about that movie too. I haven’t watched it myself, but yes, it would be, and I like the way you put it. In some ways, there isn’t a division between regular life and “church.” It’s part of your genuine fellowshipping with other believers and learning together, processing together, worshipping together. I find all of that super interesting and challenging to many of our more institutionalized contexts and experiences of church. I get to be the sociologist who comes up with wild ideas and asks challenging questions. I don’t know what that means to the institutions that are very much set in place for church life.
Joy: Anecdotally, I’m thinking about with Zoom classes people have mentioned—well, the platform doesn’t allow for it as much—but there’s less students who will gather and talk. There’s less chitter-chatter before and after a meeting. It’s more directed. It takes less time. People have said that meetings that used to take two hours before, now they’re getting snapped up in forty-five minutes.
Felicia: Yeah.
Joy: There are less extraneous details going on, and in a way that’s more “efficient” and so if we’re measuring success according to productivity or efficiency, that’s great––but what are we losing in that?
Felicia: Yeah. That example raises the question of what we think learning and education is about. It can be more efficient as in the professor or teacher is shelling out information to the students, but if we think that all the chitter-chatter is actually a part of the education and learning process then we should feel that loss. And similarly, with church life, healthy churches know, and they very much understand that church life is not about Sunday only. It is Monday through Saturday, twenty-four hours. It is visiting people and it is life together in profound ways and so finding a way to enhance our imaginations or to restructure what we think—“we” meaning maybe mainstream street view versions of what church is—is important. I know for most pastors, their experiences are much deeper than just the Sunday, even though there’s a lot of emphasis placed on it.
Joy: For Zoom classes it’s more efficient potentially, but I’m thinking it might be more (air quotes) “efficient” for services too—why not do life groups and Bible studies on Zoom. That segues to a different connected topic if we are measuring success by productivity, because we know the majority of pastors are already overworked. They’ve got that obligation, that expectation of the state of consciousness of always being connected; there’s increasing demands on them. It would seem understandable to me if they would go to technological advances, if we’ll call them that, to help them be more productive, specifically with cerebral things, like creating content and getting the stuff done, which is important, but you’ve talked before about the drawbacks of a mindset of productivity and measuring success through the lens of productivity. Would you speak to that?
Felicia: I’m nervous to speak on this because I’m not a pastor and I don’t know what the experience is like. I can certainly imagine and appreciate the degree of overwhelm of responsibilities and chronic understaffing that pastors must experience all the time. When it comes to relying on technologies, it really depends on the specifics. What specific technologies and what tasks are being outsourced, shall we say, to technological assistance? And how is that outsourcing connected to what the main vision or goals are for that pastor? If the pastor genuinely believes the goal is to get more people in the pews period, if that’s the only goal, then using what technological means are available could make sense. My suspicion and hope is that pastors don’t have that as their only goal, that their sense of call and mission and understanding of what that church community is––and what their role in leading that church community is—is much deeper, more relational, more organic and transformational. Then we have to ask the questions of how does the technological intervention help the transformational, relational aspects and that’s where, unfortunately, the technological interventions provide beautiful, efficient shortcuts to getting certain things done, but often at the cost of the stuff of the relational and the transformational and the organic. It requires a fair bit of self-awareness and intentionality, rather than doing what you see other people doing around you. I always tell my students this, especially my seniors who are working on big research projects, I tell them all of us can’t keep our goals front of the mind all the time, so we need help. Sometimes we need to put the post-it note on the mirror or on the top of my laptop, so every time I open it, I see what my actual goal is and have that be my measure. And surely throughout the day I will lose track of that goal. And similarly, for pastors, holding onto and being centred in their mission and call whether it’s through Post-Its or through prayers, is going to be central for being able to make wise choices about what kinds of technological interventions are appropriate.
Matthew: The typical question I ask is, if you had all the pastors in a room and they had to listen to you and they had to do so with a smile on their face, what would you tell them? And now, because we’re thinking about pastors, I wonder if I could reframe that; if you were able to talk to the average congregant, especially relating to what might be helpful for them to think about their pastors and the role of their leaders and all the things that go on with them, what would you want to tell the average person to think about concerning pastors?
Felicia: That’s a great question. I would want to tell the regular congregant that their pastors are human beings that are on the journey too. As Pope Francis demonstrated when he became Pope, he asked for people’s prayers and blessing. We so often look to our pastors to pray for us and to bless us. We need to be praying for and blessing our pastors as well. They need it and it’s easy for us to forget because of their leadership roles, but they’re journeying pilgrims as we are.
Matthew: When you talk about the issue of what we expect from pastors, some of that is from a longstanding kind of assumption of a hierarchy. I’m not criticizing hierarchy because that’s part of life, though there are also negative aspects to it, such as the pastor’s in charge, so they’re responsible and that makes us––the average church goers––not as responsible. This idea of the importance of things as simple as praying for the pastor—I know some pastors and I have heard them say that when they feel that they’re supported or they’re given bits of appreciation, that it’s so warming to them. It’s something like seven times more likely that we’ll criticize rather than give thanks. The importance of giving thanks and how that warms the heart of the pastor to know they’re supported, that they’re given room to be human, to potentially make mistakes, but to also enjoy, I really appreciate that.
It sounds so simple. Pray for your pastor.
Felicia: Yeah. And you’re mentioning this makes me think about how. In many congregations, their pastors don’t get to take sabbaticals. I was not familiar with that practice in church life until a bit later in my life. The churches I went to didn’t have that as part of their practices and so really creating space and time for pastors to genuinely rest and replenish, is also something we all need to encourage in our church communities.
Joy: I was gonna say how the act of prayer, the act of gratitude, the act of grace and the humility to acknowledge, “hey, we’re on this journey together. I respect you. I respect your position. I pray for you. I’m thankful for you.” You put that together so beautifully. Thank you for that.
Matthew: It also sounds like you are hopeful. When we and writers and culture engage in this conversation regarding all these technological advancements and especially how it relates to the church and church growth, and the kingdom of God, some people are not hopeful and some people are hopeful. It sounds to me like you’re leaning on the more hopeful side. Is that an accurate read?
Felicia: I am someone who tends towards immediate pessimism; that is, it’s gonna be a beast. Like, it’s not gonna be pretty. We’re going to make mistakes; things are going to go haywire. On the long game, I’m hopeful on the long game. I’m hopeful because of how I do believe that, in the end of the day, we do recognize what is true and what is good and what is beautiful in the end of the day, and that when we are awakened to those things that we do have appetites that want more. Whatever it is, church life or otherwise, we know when things aren’t quite right, and we know when we’ve experienced something that is beautiful and true. My hope is that we’re able to lean into those moments and make the changes that need to be, so that the path towards what’s true and beautiful and good gets wider.
Matthew: Yes. Yes. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. I so appreciate it.Felicia: Thank you. Thanks so much.