Faith at a Distance: How Online Tools Can Encourage Real-Life Integration & Access

By Aria Spears

I was one month into motherhood and one week into my new home. Tuning in to the locally livestreamed chapel meant I could participate in a communal moment, while my baby slept and my body healed. Three years later, though in-person is preferred, while rebuilding a new life as a bi-vocational minister and a working parent, some weeks participating online is a key lifeline. 

The 2024 report by Hartford Institute for Religion Research entitled “The Spiritual but Also Religious? The Spiritual and Religious Practices of US Church Attendees” demonstrates I’m not the only one who finds online service a meaningful part of integrating faith with real life. 

Online and hybrid participation is associated with higher rates of practice

The 2024 attendee survey asked church attendees how often they participate in religious and spiritual practices:

Religious practices included: (1) praying, (2) reading the Bible, (3) sharing faith with others, (4) using online faith-based resources, and (5) participating in small groups. Spiritual practices—which were adapted from the Fetzer Institute—included: (1) art as a spiritual practice, (2) being in nature as a spiritual practice, (3) acts of service as a spiritual practice, (4) physical activities (like yoga) as a spiritual practice, (5) writing as a spiritual practice, and (6) fasting as a spiritual practice. 

The research shows church attenders overwhelmingly participate in religious practices, but only moderately participate in spiritual ones. However, online and hybrid attenders score higher on both religious and spiritual practice, being about two or three times more likely to participate in both than in-person only attenders. This was counterintuitive to me, and as the report itself says, “challenge[s] the assumption that digital engagement is somehow ‘less authentic.'”

This report does not highlight why attendees participate online or in hybrid settings, but from what I’ve observed, hybrid and online worship is about more than convenience. For many, it can help retain connection to a community when physically being present is not an option. This could be due to a variety of factors such as military moves, illness, disability, injury, mental health conditions, work hours, caregiving responsibilities, economic and transportation factors and more. 

Congregations have an impact on frequency of religious & spiritual practice

The survey shows that congregational formation can make a difference: “After controlling for other factors, Catholics and Mainline Protestants report higher spiritual practices than Evangelical Protestants, while Evangelical Protestants score highest on religious practices.”  

Most congregations form people in one mode. Perhaps the research demonstrates that distance itself is not inherently a problem, if common religious and spiritual practice is indeed the goal. It might rather be a challenge to rethink integration, and how people integrate faith into their everyday lives, whether they attend online or in-person. 

Structure that encourages in-person and online attendees to integrate faith with life

Being a military spouse for six years while also being a minister, I learned that military families must build integration themselves, depending on what faith formation was available in a given place. It was usually a mix of in-person, online tools, and long-distance relationships of various kinds. Abiding by a faith so community-oriented while living a mobile life meant integration required creativity. 

Here’s what I propose for creating structure to increase integration for both religious and spiritual practice in online/hybrid modes of worship: 

• Encourage portable practice. Rethinking the location of common religious practices such as small groups or scripture reading could open new doors. Perhaps a small group spends time by a lake instead of the church building. Or the community is encouraged to read scripture at a park, at a public library, or other places that would bring their practice into new, accessible settings. 
• Find tools to increase one-to-many connections. Many online services include a chat host to foster 1:1 connections and help participants feel connected to someone onsite. This is helpful, but what tools could be used for increasing participation of individuals with one another?
• Service as the front door. Volunteering is the strongest predictor of both kinds of practice in the research, so lead with shared work, not programming. Attendees bring many skills through the front door (and livestreaming) every week, beyond typical church volunteering roles and hours. How could these skills be mobilized to increase connection both remotely and in-person?

Similar to my experiences of wanting to participate in a community amid frequent relocations, some attendees have more barriers to participating in-person than others. This research challenges the notion that online participation is automatically less formational for religious and spiritual practice. 

With structured and intentional use of both in-person and online tools, the church is positioned to create modes of formation that extend far beyond the church walls, integrating into people’s homes, living rooms, and everyday lives. 

Aria Spears is a bi-vocational minister, writer, and seminarian at Duke Divinity School studying community innovation. She leads executive operations at an AI workflow redesign firm and currently resides in Michigan.