Lost Locality and Counterfeit Community

“The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Click here read the shorter article I wrote about this topic.

In a world run by technology mega corporations and a culture fueled by self glorification, the sheer amount of social media obsessed individuals has reached epidemic levels. More specifically, social media platforms have experienced an overwhelming inclusion into the basic daily life of Christians. In fact, many Christians interact virtually the same with these platforms as their unbelieving counterpart. Is this a problem? Is social media a problem all by itself? It seems these questions have been left unsuccessfully addressed by local churches. Herein lies the problem. When local churches are not addressing or unsuccessfully addressing the actual realities that their members live in, it leaves those realities open for other ecosystems of influence to speak into with authority, whether that authority be biblically warranted or not. It is with this baseline that we will develop an understanding how the usage of social media platforms disentangles Christians from their locality and inhibits engagement in true biblical community. I feel that even beginning this paper with the words “social media” will result in a large majority of readers finding themselves exhausted, frustrated, and purposefully removed from this topic. It is this exact reason I am writing this paper. You, faithful Christian, must address this issue. You do not get to sit to the side in either blind indifference or purposeful inclusion to something so influential, especially something, this paper will argue, that has become more influential to many Christians than the Church itself. Spoiler alert, if these platforms are indeed as influential as this paper will discover, this is a dangerous problem for the Church. Let me be clear, this is not a problem outside of the sovereign plan or redeeming hand of God, but one that can no longer be neglected by local churches and Christians alike.

How Social Media Platforms Work

It seems that many people can feel this tension with the influence of social media platforms in their lives. It also seems, however, that many people have a challenging time actually pinpointing the heart of this tension. It is this exact reason that many discussions around the idea of social media result in this sort of exhausted, frustrated, and purposefully removed attitude as discussed earlier. So, let us first attempt to articulate the ethereal and intangible problem of social media that so many seem to be aware of, but unable to put words to. Social media platforms are owned by technology mega corporations and run mainly through computer algorithms. It is these algorithms that produce the feed of content that you see when you log on to your various social media accounts. Now, the way that these technology corporations make money is through your interactions on their website. So, if they can find a way to get you to spend more time on their website, the profit they make off of your interaction increases. It is this very idea that has caused technology corporations to create algorithms that make their platforms addictive. It is the choices like implementing notifications, the like button, and the concept of refreshing a page (one that too similarly mimics that of pulling the lever of a slot machine) that have contributed to the addictive nature of such platforms. At their core, the actual product that social media platforms are selling is the attention of you, their user. This attention is being sold to marketing agencies whose aim is to achieve some sort of behavior modification. If social media platforms can control what their users think, say, and do, they can successfully get their users to spend more time on their platform, in turn making more money. This is the entire goal of most of these large Silicon Valley technology companies. So, it is not social media in the general sense that is so bad, but the harmful mechanism employed by technology companies that present such a danger. So, the seemingly imperceivable drive of these corporations is to alter what you do, what you think, and eventually who you are. In short, your attention has become the product. If you find yourself having a hard time accepting these claims, let's look to how the algorithms behind social media platforms work. Technology corporations hire data companies to build models that predict the actions of social media users. If tech corporations are able to predict your actions, they can control your actions. The goals behind these models, or algorithms, are to increase engagement, facilitate growth, and achieve discrete advertising. This concept is literally called “growth hacking” and it is employed by social media platforms across the board.(Two of the best resources for developing a deeper understanding of these concepts are Netflix’s documentary “The Social Dilemma” and Jaron Lanier’s book Ten Reasons to Deleting Your Social Media Account Right Now.)So, at its core, your preferred social media platform is not a neutral tool sitting there, waiting to be used. These platforms, run by profit seeking and attention manipulating technology corporations, have actual intentions of their own. That is, intentions to gradually and imperceptibly change your behavior. The sad reality is, knowledge of what is truly going on in the far off offices of these tech corporations that run your preferred social media site is not enough. You still will fall prey to these addictive platforms. That is unless, if as Christians, we create a biblical framework from which to interact or choose to abstain from such platforms.

The Core of this Issue

Many local churches and Christians alike have not successfully addressed this issue. In the overwhelming majority of cases, there seems to be one of two responses. Either the dissatisfied and defeated response of people who can only exclaim, “social media is the worst” without an actual understanding of what indeed is “the worst” about the platform, or there is the blind inclusion of the platform for its marketing benefits and promises of connectivity. The first response often does not lead to any change in how one interacts with the platforms, more of just dissatisfaction and slight awareness without action. The other response is made rashly and fails to work outward from a biblically based theology. Either way, both of these responses are a failure on the Christian’s part. In many cases, the vital task of articulating a working theology of such a medium has been either neglected, or attempted and failed by many hyper-local church communities. Churches are supposed to be biblically equipping their members to live in the real time and real space that they find themselves in. This real time and real space we are living in is a world that is struggling to understand how to interact with social media in a God honoring way. Now, let me make myself very clear, we haven’t even truly made it to the core of the issue at hand. The core of this problem is not just the way social media manipulates behavior. The core issue goes further than this. It is that this behavior modification has disentangled Christians from their locality. When I say this, I mean that the personal usage of social media has shifted attention and interaction away from the local body of Christ and onto the happenings of the virtual world we choose to live in. This, in turn, has proven detrimental to what true community is biblically commanded to be. Why are these addictive platforms so enticing? People are striving for truth and belonging, yes even Christians who know the absolute truth of Christ and should find their core belonging in His body. Christians just want to know how to live their normal life as a faithful follower of Christ. Many people, believer and unbeliever alike don’t actually find this truth, belonging, and discipleship at church. Church, how have we gotten this so wrong? Church is one of the main, God-ordained, places that this should be happening. Many churches profess to be this place of genuine community, but this phrase has actually come to mean the sort of casual and surface level interactions on a Sunday morning as you walk in and out of a building. So, where the Church is lacking, Christians will look elsewhere to find such belonging and instruction. What we see with overwhelming acceptance, is that this place of main influence has become the social media ecosystems we inject ourselves into. Not only that, but that it’s permissible or even acceptable by churches that social media has become this place of primary influence.So why do Christians find themselves interacting with platforms that have no business holding that much power in their lives? What is missing is an understanding of church as the body of Christ and not as a building or event, a genuine understanding of the biblical call to community, and a lived out emphasis of the vital call to locality.(As much as I tried to develop this section to the best of my ability, there are three books that do an incredible job of articulating these thoughts, a much better job than I can do in this short paper.

1. Analog Church: Why We need Real People, Place, and things in the Digital Age is written by Jay Kim
2. Competing Spectacles: Treasuring Christ in the Media Age by Tony Reinke
3. Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a  Noisy World by Cal Newport.

These books are some of the most well written and worldview shaping books I have ever read, and I do not say that lightly.)

The Church as the Body of Christ

It is here, now understanding the core of the problem, that we turn to Scripture for instruction. I want to, for a moment, shift away from the specific discussion of social media, and focus here on what the Church truly is from a biblical basis. It is the lack of understanding here that seems to leave Christians interacting with and being influenced more by social media than the physical and embodied Body of Christ, that is the Church, of which Jesus Christ is the head (Ephesians 1:22). In the New Testament, the most common occurrence of the word church is the Greek word ekklesia. This word, literally meaning ‘called out’ refers to the worldwide Body of Christ, the Church. This notion of being called out refers to the position of Christians as being called by God out of the world and into His kingdom. This universal body does not refer to a building, a service, or even Sunday morning, but refers to the body of believers, the community of people, that profess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior over all. Churches then, are local assemblies of this universal reality. Christian culture has conflated the meaning of the word church to refer to a place, rather than a group of people. However, biblically speaking, this is not the case. This group of people will gather at a specific building, at a specific time, to do specific tasks, but it must never be forgotten or confused that it is the community of people together that is indeed the Church. With this foundation, let us look again to Scripture to understand what the Church, the Body of Christ, is fact supposed to do. Be very clear when reading this next section, this is not a to do list to be checked off, this is not a one time check and you’re done. This is a constant posture of submission to what Scripture has called the Church to be and a prayerful and passionate pursuit of allowing the Lord to sanctify and grow His Church. God commands his church to...

• Meet together in person in embodied relationships (Hebrews 11:24).
• Encourage one another to love and do good works glorifying to Him (Hebrews 11:25).
• Practice hospitality towards their neighbors, believers and unbelievers alike (1 Peter 4:9).
• Confess their sins to each other (James 5:16).
• Pray with and for each other (James 5:16).
• Be devoted to the reading of God’s Word together (Acts 2:42).
• Fellowship in community while sharing a meal (Acts 2:42).
• Practice communion (Luke 22:19).
• Teach and admonish one another in wisdom (Colossians 3:16).
• Sing with and to one another in psalms, hymns, and songs of praise (Ephesians 5:19).
• Share their lives closely with each other (1Thessalonians 2:8).
• Proclaim the Gospel (1Thessalonians 2:8).
• Pursue discipleship (Matthew 28:19).
• Baptize one another (Matthew 28:20).

This is by no means an extensive list, but it starts to build an understanding of what God has called us to. So again, this is not a one and done to do list. Rather, it is biblical evidence for what God has called His Church to fulfill and what we as Christians are to strive for in our local church communities. By His grace and His grace alone will the Holy Spirit bring this to fruition in our churches. 

The Biblical Call to Community

We now see then that it is the gathering of God’s people that is itself the Church. The call of Christians is a call to community and fellowship with God and believers. How, then, is this sort of genuine, rich, biblical community created? It is simply one word, presence. There is no method, no best practices, no quick fix, no to do list, or easy road. Repetitive, devoted, physical, embodied presence is what establishes community. The best part is, this community is not a result of a church or individual Christian, this is only established in and through the unity us Christians have in Jesus Christ. That is not a casual Christians phrase I throw around lightly, but a theological rich reality in which we do indeed live. I want to turn your attention specifically to one portion of the above statement, the word embodied. It is here where I become even more passionate about this idea of biblical community, where it is centered around embodied interactions. This may seem straightforward to some, to many of us this may feel like a distant reality we once knew (we have become far too familiar with the lack of this while living through COVID), and still to others the importance of this concept is completely foreign. Biblical community revolve around the embodied presence. God himself emphasized this idea greatly when he sent Jesus Christ, embodied, to this world. Jesus Christ lived in physical proximity to the people he ministered to. He spoke face to face with his brothers and sisters. He ate literal meals at the same table as other people. God himself came to be with man in the flesh. This shows the sheer gravity of actual, physical, embodied presence in community. (For further study on the idea of what genuine biblical community is supposed to look like, I highly recommend you read Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community)

The Emphasis on Locality

It is with this framework we turn back to talking specifically about social media. What we’ve seen is that social media (that is the algorithms and corporations that have creative addictive “realities” in which we “live”) has taken our attention and put it on something else. What I am calling for here, is a return to the emphasis of locality. The sad reality is, many people either think, or act like their social media following is community and relationship. It is not. These are substitutions for the real thing. Don’t misunderstand me here, I am not saying that you do not have real life relationships with the people that you follow or are friends with online, I hope you are, but so many of us act like these interactions on social media are the relationship we have, or act like the online profile of a person is who they really are. Stay with me, I feel like you may be tempted to roll your eyes and think this is just some cynical person who is too legalistic with their religion, please understand that this is far from the truth. My reason for writing this is to call attention to this idea that, whether explicitly or implicitly, us Christians have started or fully adopted this idea that community and relationship can be successfully replicated through some sort of screen. There is something that just cannot be replicated in Christian community without our embodied presence with each other. And even more, this isn’t even the type of interaction we crave. No one walks into church and has an extremely casual and fake conversation, and leaves thinking, “Wow, yep, that's exactly what God designed Church to be”. What does happen though, is people go to church and set their phone to the side for a minute while they worship and pray with their brothers and sisters and something inside of them stirs and screams, “Yes, this is what I was created for”. True community is not one you pick and choose. You are present to the people who are in front of your eyes and devoted to their spiritual well being. You live your life in close relationship with them, embodied. Commitment to the Body of Christ matters more than your perceived compatibility to the individuals in that Body. Living life with an emphasis on locality and embodied relationships is messy, empowering, challenging, God-glorifying, emotional, rewarding, time consuming, and when done in a biblical sense is one of the clearest pictures of heaven we will get to experience before Christ returns. That, that is what I’m calling for. Be honest, Church, does that describe us right now? I hope you can answer yes to that question, but I’m afraid that many of you would honestly answer no. 

Where to Go From Here

So, where do we even go from here. Honestly, I’ve been trying to end this paper for a while. I am hesitant to make any blanket statements about what you should or shouldn’t do in regards to social media because, really, that's not even what this paper is about. This paper is a call to action for you, the faithful Christian and church goer, to go back to a biblical understanding of the Church. Lean in to the actual community embodied around you. Resist the urge to exist in these curated realities of social media. The other challenging part of the reality with this is, we will never achieve perfection in this until Christ himself returns. We aren’t promised ease on this side of eternity. This is one of the many challenges of living in the “already, but not yet”. We are not promised perfect, and easy to love local church communities. What we are promised, however, is that God himself will sanctify us and teach us how to be faithful followers of Him in this challenging world. So, take heart. Take seriously the ways in which social media has shifted your focus away from that which truly matters, the people in front of your very eyes and God himself. Churches, before engaging in any social media platform, create working theology of what church is, what you are called to do, and how Christ is most glorified in your actions. Then and only then should you address if a social media platform has a place in your theology. Faithful Christian, reject the naive route of neglecting the actual evidence, both biblically and culturally, of how social media impacts you. Lean into the notion of what Church truly is, the body of believers in actual community with each other in your locality. Let us live as those who strive above all else to glorify God in what we do. Let us return to our locality and reject this counterfeit community. 

Click here read the shorter article I wrote about this topic.