Building real relationships through a screen feels impossible — until you realize you’ve been doing it wrong.
Most of us treat digital interaction like a vending machine. Drop in a gospel tract, press B4, expect a disciple to fall out. It doesn’t work that way online any more than it works in person. Jon and Andy tackled this head-on in a recent episode of From Text To Testimony, and what they unpacked is worth slowing down for.
You Already Know How to Do This (Sort Of)
If you grew up online — even partially — you’ve built digital relationships before. Screen names. Forum inside jokes. The slow burn of earning someone’s trust through consistent, low-stakes interaction over time. Millennials practically have a PhD in this, even if they never called it ministry.
That instinct — earn the right before you preach — is exactly what digital evangelism requires. The problem is most churches skip straight to the sermon.
Earn the Right to Have the Conversation
This is the phrase Jon and Andy keep coming back to, and it’s the hinge everything else swings on.
You don’t open a friendship by asking someone to change their entire worldview. You open it by being genuinely interested in theirs. Online, that looks like:
- Commenting consistently on someone’s content before sliding into their DMs
- Asking questions instead of making declarations
- Showing up in the same spaces — groups, threads, comment sections — long enough that your name becomes familiar
Trust is currency online just like offline. You can’t spend what you haven’t deposited.
The Screen Name Principle
There’s a reason Jon and Andy brought up screen names. Back in the early internet days, your online identity was something you built. People knew your handle. They knew your vibe. They trusted or distrusted you based on how you showed up over time.
That principle hasn’t changed — the platform just has. Your profile, your content, your comments, your DMs — they’re all building a reputation. The question is: what kind?
Are you known as the person who only posts when they want something? Or the one who shows up, engages, encourages, and actually cares?
Ministry flows from the second kind of digital identity.
Community Groups Are the Cheat Code
Here’s a concrete strategy Jon and Andy highlight: community groups are where real digital relationships get built.
Facebook Groups. Discord servers. Reddit threads. Subreddits with niche interests. These are the digital equivalent of your neighbor’s backyard — informal, interest-based, and surprisingly open to real conversation.
Find groups where your target audience already hangs out. Don’t go in swinging a Bible. Go in as a participant. Answer questions. Share your experience. Be human. Over time, your faith becomes part of who you are in that space — not a sales pitch, but a story.
“Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” — 1 Peter 3:15
Notice: they have to ask. That only happens when you’ve made them curious enough to wonder what’s different about you.
Texting and Messaging Aren’t Lesser Relationships
Here’s the lie we need to kill: that a relationship only “counts” if it happens in person. Jon and Andy push back on this hard, and they’re right.
Some of the most spiritually formative conversations in people’s lives happen in text threads. Why? Because people are more honest when they’re not being watched. The distance of a screen creates safety — and safety creates openness.
That’s not a bug. That’s a feature you can steward well.
Follow up with people via text. Check in. Remember what they told you last time and bring it back up. Those tiny acts of remembering are discipleship in miniature.
When Digital Turns Into Ministry
The ups and downs Jon and Andy describe — the misread tones, the ghosted conversations, the unexpected breakthroughs — sound a lot like regular ministry because they are regular ministry.
Digital relationships aren’t second-tier. They’re just a different terrain. And like any terrain, the missionaries who learn the landscape reach people the others can’t.
The goal isn’t a text chain. It’s transformation. But transformation starts with connection, and connection starts with showing up — consistently, genuinely, in the spaces where people already are.
Your Next Step
Don’t wait until you have a perfect strategy. Start one conversation this week — in a group, in a comment section, in a DM — with zero agenda except to be genuinely interested in another person.
Then join the Being the Church, Digitally Facebook Group where practitioners are sharing tools, trends, and real stories of what’s working in digital ministry right now.
And if you want personalized help building your digital ministry presence, take this quick survey to connect with a coach who can walk alongside you.
The mission field has a WiFi signal. Time to get in the game.
