Chapter 7 of 15 · Framework Thinking
What Makes a Church's Digital Presence Feel Like Church?
Chapter 7, “Creating Digital Spaces (The 4 S's),” from Online Church Is Not the Answer by Jay Kranda
Short answer: Streaming, Strengthening, Social, and Systems. If all four exist, your digital offering starts to look like the church in Acts instead of a weekly broadcast. The question the chapter leaves you with: which S is missing at your church?
What is this chapter about?
Before the four S's, I back up and ask what a church functionally is. The early church met in the Temple and from house to house (Acts 5:42), then in synagogues, then mostly in homes, in Mary's house and Lydia's and Priscilla and Aquila's. They read scripture out loud because copies were scarce, memorized it, prayed, fasted, took communion, cared for the poor, and mentored each other (2 Timothy 2:2). If you've ever built a world in Minecraft or Rollercoaster Tycoon, you know every map has foundational pieces. Large gatherings, small gatherings, daily habits, and mentorship are the church's. If those happen digitally, it'll feel like church. A stream by itself won't.
The first S is Streaming your large gatherings, and almost everyone already does it. You don't have to stream every service; pick the one that represents you best. Streaming extends the back row, and new people peek in to try before they buy. The second S is Strengthening, the discipleship style small gatherings, one on one mentoring, and self guided experiences. A new member class on Zoom a few times a year, volunteer training you can listen to on a run, a mentor phone call. I had an online volunteer who wouldn't turn on her camera for years because the profile photo was her daughter who had passed away, and Zoom was the crawl step in her healing. Self guided is the most obvious win: I built the Begin page on this site because I kept answering the same questions, and a master Google doc can do the same for your church.
The third S is Social. Early on I called our Facebook Group the digital foyer, the online patio where the community hangs out when a service isn't happening. Social is also where you add real value to your congregation's week instead of just promoting Sunday, and where people who have never been to a church discover what you're about. Netflix shapes what most people think Christians believe more than a church visit does. The fourth S is Systems: your CRM, giving, content management, group tools, and reporting. Not fun, but everything else runs on their back, and a flawed system will quietly derail what you're trying to do.
What are the big ideas?
Sun Tzu said everyone can see the tactics but nobody sees the strategy that produced the win. The four S's are the strategy behind the tactics. Pair them with an Alpha Omega Approach and you'll get real momentum instead of a Facebook Group and a YouTube stream that never talk to each other.
Who is this chapter for?
The church that streams and posts and can't figure out why nothing deeper happens online. It's also the chapter behind most of the guides on this site.
What is the Big Idea of chapter 7?
Big Idea: Doing church digitally means much more than just pushing content out online. Which of the four S's exist at your church? Which S is currently missing?
What else do people ask?
What are the 4 S's of digital?
Streaming (large gatherings), Strengthening (small gatherings, one on one mentorship, and self guided experiences), Social (community spaces and content), and Systems (the CRM, giving, and internal tools everything runs on).
What counts as a strengthening experience?
Anything that builds people up toward Christ in a smaller or self directed format: a Zoom class, an online small group, mentoring over a phone call, a reading plan, or a video course.
Do we have to stream every worship service?
No. The book recommends streaming the one service that best represents you and being strategic about the rest. A church plant might do a podcast and an Instagram live debrief instead.
Which S do most churches skip?
Strengthening and Systems. Most churches stream and post on social, but few offer digital discipleship steps or invest in the systems that make personalization and scale possible.