From Parish Apps to Distributed Learning: The New Geography of Faith

By The Very Rev. Dr. Mark C. Lee, DMin, PhD, BCC, ACPE/NF 

Every week, I receive pastoral care, scripture reflection, community prayer, and news from my parish, St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields in Columbia, South Carolina, where the Rev. Mitchell Smith and the Rev. Caitlyn Keith are doing remarkable ministry. I read the weekly email whether I am at home or traveling, and wherever I happen to be, it helps me remain connected to the life of St. Martin’s. I may be miles away, but I am still part of the community. 

The same is true when I open the St. Martin’s app on my phone. There is my parish. I can submit a prayer request, make a gift, learn what is happening, and find ways to participate. Facebook and Instagram extend that connection further, making the life of the community visible and accessible throughout the week. 

These tools are more than technological conveniences. In many ways, they have become a kind of digital front porch—a place where a congregation that disperses after Sunday worship can continue to gather, communicate, and care for one another. 

That sense of connection extends to worship as well. For those who cannot be physically present, St. Martin’s livestreams its Sunday service and maintains an archive on YouTube. Lay Eucharistic Ministers carry the consecrated elements to members who are homebound and wish to receive the Eucharist. Technology does not replace embodied ministry; rather, it works alongside it, helping the parish maintain relationships across distance and circumstance. 

This reflects a reality facing churches everywhere. Our lives are increasingly dispersed. People travel. They commute. Families juggle complicated schedules. Health, mobility, work, caregiving, and geography can all affect how and when people gather. At the same time, the need for belonging, spiritual formation, and meaningful Christian community has not diminished. 

The question, then, is not simply how we use technology. It is how we create and sustain Christian community when proximity can no longer be our only measure of presence. 

Authentic Christian community has never depended solely on sharing the same physical space. It depends upon intentionality: a shared commitment to prayer, formation, relationship, mission, and care for one another. Used thoughtfully, technology can help extend those practices. It can invite people into relationships, sustain connections across distance, and make participation possible for people who might otherwise remain at the margins. 

I see the same pattern at a larger scale in theological education. 

Bexley Seabury Seminary describes itself as a “Seminary Beyond Walls.” Our distributed learning model allows students to pursue theological education and formation while remaining embedded in the communities where they live, work, worship, and serve.  

Bishops, priests, deacons, lay leaders, and others preparing for ministry can learn alongside people whose contexts may be hundreds—or thousands—of miles apart. 

This is about more than making seminary accessible from a distance. It changes the geography of formation. 

Instead of asking students to leave their communities in order to prepare for ministry, distributed theological education allows much of that formation to take place within those communities. What students encounter in the classroom can be tested, questioned, and practiced in the congregations, workplaces, neighborhoods, and ministries they already know. At the same time, they become part of a learning community that stretches far beyond their own local context. 

A student in one diocese encounters the perspective of a classmate serving in another. A priest learns alongside a lay leader. Someone ministering in a rural congregation may wrestle with the same theological question as someone serving in an urban parish. Distance, rather than preventing community, can broaden it. 

Why does this work theologically and not merely functionally? 

Two convictions are important. 

First, distributed learning need not be passive learning. At Bexley Seabury, theological education is not simply content delivered through a screen. Formation requires participation: showing up, listening, discussing, questioning, praying, writing, reflecting, and being accountable to one another. Technology provides the means of connection, but relationship gives that connection meaning. 

Second, Christian formation is inherently contextual and incarnational. Theological education should help students recognize, interpret, and participate in God’s work, wherever it is happening, and connect their formation more deeply to the communities and contexts in which they are called to serve. As much as ecclesia is not about the building, but about the people, formation is not limited to physical space and proximity. 

That is one of the most promising possibilities of distributed theological education. The classroom is not separated from ministry. The parish, hospital, nonprofit organization, neighborhood, workplace, and community is a part of the learning environment. 

In that sense, what I experience through my parish and what I see at Bexley Seabury are connected. 

A parishioner opening an email from a hotel room, a homebound member joining worship through a livestream, and a seminarian entering a conversation with classmates scattered across several dioceses are all reminders that Christian community has never been defined simply by geography. What matters is the intentional work of gathering people into relationship with God and with one another. 

Digital tools cannot manufacture community, and they should never be mistaken for community itself. But used with care and purpose, they can help us create the conditions in which relationships deepen, formation happens, and people who might otherwise remain separated discover that they belong to something larger than themselves.  

The Church has always carried the Gospel across boundaries. Roads, letters, printing presses, radio, telephones, and countless other technologies have helped Christians teach, worship, communicate, and remain connected across distance. The tools have changed, but the calling has not. 

Christ meets people where they are.   

Today, “where they are” may be a parish pew, a hospital room, an airport lounge, a rural congregation, a city apartment—or a distributed learning cohort connecting people across the Church. 

Perhaps the new geography of faith is not really about geography at all. It is about learning to recognize that community can extend beyond walls without losing the relationships, accountability, worship, and shared mission that make it Christian community in the first place.