Pastoral Care in the Digital Age
If you are struggling with digital communication, I encourage you to see it not as drudgery but rather as an opportunity to extend just a little bit of God’s grace and love to those you’re emailing or tweeting with.
It’s no secret that we spend more and more time online. You’re reading this article online. You likely have at least one—and probably several—social media accounts. And many of our churches likewise have an online presence, even if it’s just a dorky early 2000s website in desperate need of upgrading. A significant amount of my communication happens online. I teach online, interact with clients almost exclusively online, send a lot of emails back and forth with publishers, and engage with friends across the world online. Now, I’m not a pastor, but I do have some ideas about how we can aim to be more loving, more pastoral, in our digital worlds. (I bet you wish you had a dollar for every time someone *not a pastor* offered you advice.)
