Gen Z, “holds the weight of the world in their pockets,” a colleague once remarked to me. I agree. The rise of smart devices and social media has fundamentally interwoven our physical and digital lives. Algorithms know us better than we know ourselves. Online personas bleed into personal identity. News from around the world inundates us daily – stories of war, crisis, and inequities.

Digital natives — those born into the world of ubiquitous screens and instant gratification – must figure out how to cope with this hybrid reality. The digital world wreaks devastating effects on young people’s mental health and self-esteem, leads to addictions to pornography and social media and causes socialization problems. We need wisdom to navigate the hopelessness, the fatigue and the pain of powerlessness.

Proverbs 2:6 says “For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.” In Christ, we are connected to the only true source of wisdom, and our world is starving for it.

It is tempting, in the face of all the threats imposed by the digital world, to simply disengage. And, maybe, for some, this will be necessary. But asceticism has never been the thrust of Christianity. We worship a God who chose to engage – to be embodied in our mess and encapsulated in our history. Following Jesus means we choose to be His embodied presence in the messy moments of history.

InterVarsity values community – for most of our 93-year history our ministry has happened exclusively in-person. In every ministry area, we prioritize small groups and relational activities like Bible studies, hikes, and potlucks. Through shared goals, the Holy Spirit forms deep relationships over weeks, months, even years. Hybrid reality doesn’t fit neatly with our modus operandi.

Many of my staff colleagues acknowledge a decided resignation directed towards digital ministry. When asked how they feel about doing ministry via screens, they express feelings ranging from appreciating the potential, to feeling ill equipped or too stretched to invest, to wishing we could ignore it. One colleague honestly admitted their greatest barrier to digital ministry is “My hatred for it.”

It’s not a lack of knowing the need that stops us from adapting, it’s discomfort and distrust. This colleague went on to say, “For me, the shift is about seeing the value of it. And just the reality that this is how this generation interacts, and it doesn’t matter if I think there’s a better way to interact or not. I have to bury that [hatred] and find a way to let this be a part of my life for the sake of connection.”

It doesn’t help that when it comes to digital engagement – especially in this last season of crisis – we have tended to get stuck in fight, flight, or freeze. Another young colleague noted: in even our best-intentioned responses, “we lack the imagination of how to engage with the [hybrid reality] in a way that actually takes advantage of the opportunities that present themselves, considering it is a reality that isn’t going away anytime soon”.

Rather than settling for digital ministry being a sad replacement for gathering IRL (internet speak for “in real life”), we are seeking to find ways of communicating that emerge from and respect the digital landscape.

So, though it’s not our first nature, we pray for eyes to see how God’s redemptive hand can turn even hybrid reality towards good. Along with trouble and strife, the world-wide nature of the Web we’ve woven has created world-wide opportunities for the Gospel to be shared, received, and nurtured

During the tightest lockdowns of the COVID pandemic, student leaders in Atlantic Canada shared weekly TikTok videos of outdoor prayer and worship set to golden sunrises and sweeping ocean vistas, reminding viewers to send prayer requests via DM (direct message).

On the West Coast, the BC team experimented with a Sabbath podcast. Our camps launched Camp at Home. We’re developing video resources for high school students, ad podcasts to connect with students and encourage our staff

Jesus stepped into 1st Century Palestine under Roman occupation, not to overthrow reality but to sow the seeds of God’s revolutionary kingdom within it. Attempting to overthrow or dismiss the digital world would be like throwing seeds at an empire in hopes it will fall.

What if, instead, we held hope that even within this hybrid reality we can sow seeds of revolution to bring God’s Kingdom?