The Christian Chronicle Podcast

Episode 144: Should ministers be trained for the digital age? (Todd Brenneman and Tommie Lee Washington)

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Once upon a time, a Church of Christ minister could be effective with some education in Bible and training in preaching.

But is that enough in the "digital world" of the 21st century?

Dr. Todd Brenneman and Tommie Lee Washington, professors at Faulkner University, make the case that it's past time for Church of Christ ministers to add excellence in media and technology to their ministry repertoire.

In this episode, we talk about how the "digital citizens" of the 21st century expect to encounter and interact with ideas...including the gospel. Among the things that come up in this discussion:

  • Designing church materials using tools like Canva
  • Reaching more people through new media and streaming platforms
  • Using cutting edge animation software to produce teaching content
  • Producing lessons and sermons using AI 

The New Testament is full of examples of ancient Christian teachers using the innovations of their time to communicate the gospel. So is it so far-fetched to imagine that Christian teachers today will do the same?

But is there any point at which using technological innovation to preach and teach the gospel is going too far? What are the dangers?

Link to the Faulkner University Bachelor of Biblical Studies with a digital ministry track

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BT Irwin:

Familian friends, neighbors, and most of all, strangers, welcome to the Christian Chronicle Podcast. We're bringing you the stories shaping Church of Christ congregations and members around the world. I'm BT or Way. May what you are about to hear bless you and honor God. Technology sure is changing things at church, is it not? One of the hardest things for me to remember when I preach is that most congregations now live stream. I'm the kind of preacher who doesn't stand behind a pulpit or stand still even for a minute. I tend to walk out into the audience and back and forth across the front of the room, which doesn't work when a congregation has one fixed camera in the middle aisle. I feel sorry for the folks watching at home who never see me except for when I cross the middle aisle like a bear caught on a trail camp. Yesterday I was at a church leadership training event when the facilitator admitted that her entire presentation and slide deck was created by ChatGPT. And I was amazed when several of the people in the room, all of the ministers or ministry leaders, nodded with enthusiasm and said that they too use ChatGPT all the time to help them craft their lessons and sermons. And of course, we here at the Christian Chronicle are on TikTok, where we've noticed a short and entertaining video can generate hundreds of thousands of views, as some of our TikToks have done. Yet we get frustrated because all of those thousands of views don't turn into sustained engagement with our other media and stories or substantial interaction with our Church of Christ audience around the world. These are just three examples of how what we might call the digital age is changing how the Church of Christ and its members connect with the world around them. In the age of live streaming, chat GPT, and TikTok, among countless other communication technologies, how does the church carry out its mission and keep practicing the essentials? That's a question that Faulkner University in Montgomery, Alabama is trying to answer. More important, it's an opportunity for which it is trying to prepare Christian ministers in the 21st century. New technologies are scary, as they've always been for as long as human beings have invented them, but they also present the church with powerful new ways to be the church and to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to all the world. This fall, 2025, Falkland University launched its new Bachelor of Biblical Studies degree with a track in digital ministry. It's one of the first Bible degree programs in the country that not only trains ministers on biblical literacy and practical ministry, but also in communication and digital arts and technologies. Here with us today to tell us more is Dr. Todd Brenneman, assistant professor of Christian history at the VP Black College of Biblical Studies and the Kearley Graduate School of Theology at Faulkner University. He's the author or contributor to several books, including Homespun Gospel, The Triumph of Sentimentality in American Evangelicalism from Oxford University Press. And I'll tell you right now, I just put that on my reading list. We also have Tommy Lee Washington, assistant professor of digital media, who developed and heads up the digital media degree program at Faulkner University. He is a two-time Emmy winner, and you have seen his work if you have ever watched ESPN in the last 30 years. Tommy Lee Washington pioneered the motion graphics that have become an essential part of almost every ESPN broadcast. So, Todd, Tommy, thank you for doing some real life digital ministry with us today. Thanks for being here. Thank you.

Tommie Lee Washington:

Good to be here.

BT Irwin:

Okay, so we have to start here, or nothing else in this conversation will make sense. What is digital ministry?

Dr. Todd Brenneman:

The way I think about it is that it is any type of ministry that involves the use of technologies to expand the message to particularly online platforms. And that can be something as simple as doing a live stream on Facebook to a podcast like what we're doing, to you know, something like what you see with the Bible project or something like that, where you know it's it's creating content that is meant to uh be digested sometimes in very short forms. So it covers a wide variety of ways, but it's basically the idea of you know expanding that into an an online predominantly online type of uh atmosphere.

Tommie Lee Washington:

And I would I would agree with that as well, but expand upon that a little bit because when we look at things in marketing, for instance, just say a church's bulletin. There's an example where this congregation that I'm attending right now, as we you know moved just moved here to Montgomery about over a year ago now, their bulletin just to be bluntless, but just horribly designed. And so I you know went to the elders and said, Hey, is there anybody that knows Canva in the in the congregation? Or you know, and we got together with some folks and we redesigned the bulletin. And so printed media, t-shirts for VBS, you know, a lot of other things, we we bring that into the whole digital media space because they're now they're created and designed digitally, right? They're they're created on a computer. And so the program not only deals with you know video and and and you know, podcasting and audio and that type of media, but it's also dealing with you know some physical things and and you know, still print printed media and things of that nature.

BT Irwin:

Glad you brought up those examples because how many of us have thought of a church bulletin or t-shirts as an innovation, and yet at one time they were pretty innovative. And I was thinking as you were talking about how in the middle of the 20th century, radio and TV programs were very popular uh among the Church of Christ crowd. And so we have a long history of using these innovations in our ministries. And so when we hear digital ministry, that might sound intimidating, but we have a lot of practice at this going back many years. Yeah. So on Faulkner University's website, you say that your Bachelor of Biblical Studies degree in digital ministry provides, quote, innovative ministry education for the digital age, and quote, we just used the word innovation a few minutes ago to talk about things like bulletins and and radio. What kinds of innovations do y'all have in mind to foresee uh in the future for us?

Tommie Lee Washington:

The church has started using PowerPoint years ago, right? During for whether it's for a sermon or you know, for the songs, you know. And at one point you were considered liberal if you use the PowerPoint, right? Um so I just did a a talk at Faulkner not too long ago about this topic, digital ministry. And I showed an example of how I could have, for my title slide, put up just some black text over a white background that said, you know, ministry, the title was ministry and digital media. And I could have done that, and I did, and I showed them what it would look like, but then I showed them another slide that where I went on to a free image site like Pixabay, and I looked for like um wets of people, and I really didn't find what I was looking for. They were kind of the silhouettes, and the people were kind of too spread out. So I went on to Chat GPT and I said, Hey, give me a silhouette of various types of people, but then subtract the word ministry out of the silhouette. And it gave me exactly what I wanted. Oh wow, and so then I just removed the bottom part, I added an ampersand, and some text nicely designed underneath that image that said digital media, and I had my title slide. I also threw a background behind it of a neighborhood, and so I had the people, I had the you know, the the neighborhood, and I had the title in ministry and digital media, and it was a lot more clever, it was the design was a lot more interesting and engaging, right? And and so I you know, to start with that slide, now I've got everybody engaged, they're they're they're wanting to hear more because just simply because of the design of the title slide. So that's just kind of an example of uh what can be done.

Dr. Todd Brenneman:

Yeah, and kind of piggybacking on what Tommy's talking about. When you look at typical ministry education, there is a lot of emphasis, and quite rightly, a lot of emphasis, even in Faulkner. We emphasize a lot about knowing the text, knowing how to study the text, knowing how to interpret the text, present lessons, those kind of things. But you know, as we're thinking about this current digital world that we're in, as we think about trying to reach an audience that is you know digital natives. We have a I have a colleague here in the College of Biblical Studies, and I'm gonna modify a little bit what he said, but he said he says something along the lines of the devil is out there broadcasting in 4K ultra high def, you know, digital, you know, that's his presentation, and the church is often broadcasting in black and white. Yeah, wow. And that I think is something that we we really need to take notice of. That there are so many tools out there that are some of which are very easy, very inexpensive to use, that would help us better engage the uh the audience, you know, especially thinking, I mean thinking within the church, better connecting with them, but then outside the church, those that the the those that are the lost. Yeah. Um, and if we're not preparing our ministers to to do some of those kind of things, then then I think we're we're not we're not preparing them effectively. Tommy mentioned AI. AI is going to transform all sorts of occupations, and ministry is going to be one of them. And if we don't start thinking about how do we train ministers to ethically use AI, to use AI in ways that support their engagement with the text, and the fact that a lot of people are going to start using AI to ask religious questions too. And how do we help ministers, how do we help the church begin to think through some of those challenges?

BT Irwin:

There are very few colleges or universities right now that have a degree in digital ministry. Faulkner is one of the only few. So, what was it that made Faulkner decide, yeah, we're going to make this investment? It's worth it. We really need to do this, we're going to go for it.

Dr. Todd Brenneman:

I think for us, in you know, in the College of Biblical Studies, we have a couple of alumni at some pretty good size-sized congregations who are serving as I mean, their title might be slightly different here and there, but like media outreach ministers, where they have kind of stepped into this space where they are they're in charge of the website, they're in charge of the social media, they're in charge of you know, sometimes the the AV in the auditorium. And so they really reached out to us and said, you know, look, we had to kind of stumble through this. We have gotten master's degrees from Liberty or Regent or you know, some of these other universities outside the churches of Christ, and we really want to help bring this type of education to our students because we see such a need for it because of what we've been in. We already have the Bible faculty that can teach the ministry courses. Let's do kind of an interdisciplinary degree where you're getting digital media, you're getting a class from business on digital marketing. As much as I hate to talk about marketing the church, it is something we really need to think about. And then, of course, your Bible classes. And so we had several things come together at the same time that said, let's let's do this, because it's it's not going to be a huge investment where we have to hire new faculty and we have we have to you know completely create new courses. A lot of things were were falling into place.

BT Irwin:

You said I hate to talk about marketing the church or something like that. You remember? And I reckon that's kind of kind of where some of the squeamishness may come from from people who are listening to all this. They're like, are we talking about marketing the church through the world's methods and the world's means? And so you you I you kind of were squeamish yourself when you were talking that back then. Would you would you unpack that for us a little bit? Talk us about that reticence about marketing the church, but why you feel like you kind of need to go there anyway.

Dr. Todd Brenneman:

That website is marketing the church. You are trying to present to the outside, this is who we are, this is what we believe, you know, this is why you will draw closer to Jesus if you worship with us. And so, you know, on the one hand, that reticence of marketing is such a commercial term, and and often when the church and commerce intertwine, it is usually bad for the church. But on the other hand, people are looking at us, people are looking at the church in in a wide variety of ways, and so we have to think about things like image, things like advertising, things like you know, what what kind of message are we communicating to outsiders to say this is why you know that you should connect with this group of of believers. And so that that's on one side, it's it's that language of marketing that disturbs me. But on the other side, what we're really talking about is essentially that. You know, we're we're marketing the gospel, not in the sense of of commerce, right? Not in the sense of economics, but in the sense of we're trying to attract people to Jesus. And I think of you know, Paul throughout Acts, he he did that. And depending on the audience he was with, he approached it differently. You know, with with Jewish audiences, he was quoting from Moses, he was quoting from the prophets. When he is with the Gentiles, he's talking about you know, seeing the the good things that come in life as coming from God. When he's on the Areopagus, you know, he's using philosophy, he's using their poets, all in an attempt to say, This is why this is important, and this is why you should listen to me. And so while we might feel uneasy with that term marketing, we do have to recognize that in a sense, what we are doing what we're doing at our base is marketing, right? We're trying to draw people to Jesus. Jesus isn't a product, the church isn't a product to be sold, but we we do need to be appealing to the people around us.

BT Irwin:

It's really not a whole lot different from back before there was such a thing as a website, you know, a church of Christ would cut the grass and plant flowers and make sure the building looked nice and was painted and the parking lot was clean because we want to present ourselves uh as inviting and welcoming to our neighbors. We want to look like the kind of place where they want to be. And so when we talk about a website, really in some ways that's just an extension of what we've we've all already done. One of the things that occurs to me, though, is where people kind of push back and maybe get intimidated, it's the fear of being left behind. Like we know how to plant flowers in front of our church building, but is this something that a small congregation, like a website, a really nice website, or some of these things that y'all have talked about, those things may seem like they're beyond our reach. Like we can't possibly do that because we're small or we don't have the resources. Is is digital ministry is effective digital ministry in the 21st century? Is that something any congregation can do, or do you have to have a certain size and budget?

Tommie Lee Washington:

Certainly something that every congregation can do. Canva, which I mentioned earlier, you know, is a great program. You know, we're gonna we're gonna teach our students how to design things with without templates like for them to actually create it themselves. But Canva has a great tool, and it's free to churches. So, you know, as far as if you're concerned about budget, there's there's not really you know, it's free. So but they have great tools for various printed materials, whether it's you know, it's your your uh bulletin or things of that nature, but your PowerPoints, you look at Jesus, you know, in the New Testament, when he spoke in parables, a lot of times he would do that in order to plant an image in the people's minds. Now, with all the tools that we have, to be able to plant an image in somebody's mind to help them remember a teaching or something of you know, or to to remember a concept, is just a great way of using that type of teaching or imagery and in kind of the ways that God has you know set that precedent for us in the past, and Jesus has as well. So we're trying to kind of just take that to another level and and use digital media in that way.

Dr. Todd Brenneman:

And you think about even doing something like a live stream on Facebook Live or or YouTube, while you can certainly get very high quality, very expensive video and sound equipment, you can do a lot of very high quality type of work with a lot of cell phones, a lot of smartphones these days are of such quality. So, you know, yes, there are some you can certainly, you know, do you know, go to the extreme, you know, top of the line, those kind of things. But you can do a lot of excellent presentation with with tools that are either relatively inexpensive or already on hand.

BT Irwin:

So give me some examples. I I I bet some people are really curious about if they let's say they enrolled in this program at Faulkner. What would they be learning how to do as a part of this degree program?

Tommie Lee Washington:

So we're trying to expose them to a little bit of everything, right, when it comes to digital media. So, as I mentioned earlier, print design. So let me just talk about some of the software first, and then we'll get into the actual things that they'll be creating. So Adobe Creative Cloud is the software that we're basically using. So, with that, you have Photoshop, which is the digital manipulation type courses. You have Adobe Illustrator, which is vector-based, so that's scalable. Then we get into InDesign, which is more of a corporate publication software. So it's more for layout, page, several page layout, if you're doing a flyer, a bulletin, things of that nature. And then we get into some animation, which is you know what my love and what I've done at ESPN for over 30 years, where we get into Adobe After Effects, and then you know, we're gonna get into some of the stuff that the younger people like a little bit more, which is gaming, right? I'm actually working with Kyle Butt and Apologetics Press to you know possibly create something where it's more of like a game, but you're also learning the Bible. And so there's just it's just God keeps you know giving us some ideas on how we can use this to grow the church, edify the church, evangelize. And so that's just uh you know a little sampling of uh what we're thinking uh of what we're we're doing as far as offering uh with this program.

BT Irwin:

And Tommy, these are you just rattled off a lot of stuff that maybe the average person has never heard of. I've worked with some of that stuff before. We're talking about Bible majors learning all of these things, right? That's correct.

Speaker 2:

That's a great well.

Tommie Lee Washington:

I mean, so the Bible majors will be learning some of the basic stuff. You know, I was like the 3D animation and stuff like that. That's a little bit more the digital media majors.

BT Irwin:

Well, I want to ask y'all where you think all this is headed, and you can't predict the future, of course, but the way that we do church and present the gospel has changed radically over the generations. Y'all have your finger more on the pulse of what is changing. You we've already brought up AI, we're talking about animation, which is not something I expected to talk about. When you look at where things are headed in the middle of the, as we head to the middle of the 21st century, what characteristics or trends do you see emerging in the generations that are coming that indicate where the church and its ministries are gonna need to go over the next 20 or 30 years? And this could be real specific stuff like animation and podcasts and AI, or where do you think the world of technology is gonna lead the church and how we respond to that world?

Dr. Todd Brenneman:

I I think that there needs to be greater attention to how we can use digital media, digital avenues to you know continue connections with within the church that you look at acts, right? And they were they were daily together. I I don't I don't know that we're going to be going back to a time where where that's likely, but are there digital tools we can use that would help keep us connected beyond those those Sundays and those maybe Wednesdays, you know, that that would allow us to encourage each other daily. But I but I also think that on the other hand, kind of going back the other way, we we need to be thinking about how do we foster that connection. We are going in so many different directions that it is easy to disconnect from each other. So how do we how do we foster that connection? And how do we as odd as this sounds, in a podcast about digital ministry, how do we how do we encourage people to pull back at times to do the deep meditating on scripture, the the deep relationship work that we should have as as fellow Christians, right? And so to not fall into the trap of you know, I I got this three-minute podcast or I got this three-minute video, and I I got enough Bible for this week. You know, that that's a danger on the other side. So trying to find that balance is going to be very, very important. AI has a lot of good things about it, but AI is also very dangerous, especially the more conversational it becomes. AI will tailor its message on religious topics based on what it has learned about the person it's conversing with. As much as it sounds strange that elders need to know about AI, elders need to know about AI.

Tommie Lee Washington:

Wow.

Dr. Todd Brenneman:

Because it's affecting the the congregations that they're shepherding.

Tommie Lee Washington:

Short form snippets, you know, the shorts that you see on Facebook or on your YouTube feed and and various other social media, those, you know, two to five second, you know, ten second little video clips is a great way to share just little snippets of truth. And so, you know, I I kind of like that. I think that's going to be something that becomes more powerful for the church to use, but also the reach, you know, there's the ability to reach millions of people with the gospel, with the truth. You know, we can't be afraid of a technology that is actually working in in such a positive way, and we just gotta learn about it and and and use it in a good way.

BT Irwin:

You've laid out a lot of amazing benefits of emerging technologies and how the church can innovate to you know proclaim the gospel in the world and reach people at the same time. How do we as the church put up some guardrails that will not allow technology to take over? It's easy to get addicted to it, and yet the church is still a community that gathers around the Lord's table and communes together in relationship, and that's where the magic happens. And uh, it's still supposed to be a space where people are maturing in Christ, we're moving on from the milk to the meat. How as leaders, I we're all three leaders here in the church, and people listening to this are leaders. How as leaders do we use technology for what it's meant for, take advantage of these innovations and yet not let it take over and replace what is essential about the church and its mission in the world?

Dr. Todd Brenneman:

Too often elders get involved in things that probably deacons should be taken care of, and and they don't think about what the shepherding aspect is, right? And so as an eldership, if you're if you're appointing someone to be in charge of the building that's going to make decisions about paint colors and carpet, you know, let that person handle that. You've you've entrusted that person for that and focus on shepherding and feeding the flock. And so I think shepherds need to in this contemporary time, they need to find a way to help educate the flock on, and and a lot of this is an exampling, developing relationships, true relationships, right? I I think you're absolutely right. There's is technology is giving us an illusion of connection, and so it requires people making decisions and thinking about here's how technology can help us right engage both each other and you know the the lost. But there are other things that technology can't uh do or can't do as well. One of the struggles the at least in some of the congregations I've been a part of, and I I think that's probably true elsewhere, is we we struggle with uh developing disciples, yeah, and we struggle with uh maturing. And and I think that if we understood discipleship better and and engaging people and helping people understand what they're becoming a part of, that they're becoming a part of a community that is to love each other. Well, how do you I mean, in Order to love other people, you have to know them. And and technology, social media, gives us a veneer of knowing people.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Dr. Todd Brenneman:

Right? Because I've seen all the pictures you post. Right. So I know where you've been and what you've been doing, but I don't really know you. If that's my only interaction with you.

BT Irwin:

What excites you the most for the future of the Church of Christ as we move into further into this digital age?

Dr. Todd Brenneman:

And now there's a lot of other work, right, that needs to be done that isn't technology driven, but the fact that we can touch the lives of people in a wide variety of settings and take the gospel to them, even from places like Montgomery, Alabama. And we can impact people across the United States, across the world for Jesus. I think that's just an exciting opportunity that we have that the churches, even really, really small churches, can have such an outsized impact. Maybe even on some people they'll never they'll never know about and they'll never meet the side of heaven. Yes.

Tommie Lee Washington:

Yeah, I would echo everything Todd just said. Um, but I think I'm probably most excited about the fact that going forward, the church's um digital media graphics, however they're using, it's just gonna look so much better. It's gonna be at a professional level, um, and it'll be engaging, it'll be exciting.

BT Irwin:

We use Pixabay for our music. The podcast sits on Buzz Sprout. We recorded on StreamYard, but I can tell you that Chat GPT did not write this episode. And Todd Tommy are not AIs, they're real people. So thank you all for being with us today.

Tommie Lee Washington:

Thank you. Uh BT, thank you so much for having us.

BT Irwin:

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