You Survived Easter 2020. Now What?
Let’s be honest. Nobody was ready.
A month before Easter 2020, most churches had never streamed a single service. Then COVID-19 hit, and suddenly every pastor became a broadcast director, every living room became a green room, and every church figured out — fast — how to put worship online.
And you did it. On the biggest Sunday of the Christian calendar. That deserves a real moment of recognition.
But celebration only lasts so long. Because the harder question is already here: what happens next?
Welcome to the Phygital Church
Here’s a word you need to add to your ministry vocabulary: phygital.
Physical + Digital = Phygital.
It’s not a cute buzzword. It’s a description of where the Church is actually headed — and where your strategy needs to go.
Here’s the reality: the Church has been doing physical services for two thousand years. We know that playbook cold. Rows of seats, a stage, a sermon, a song, maybe a coffee bar in the lobby. We’ve refined it for centuries.
Then COVID forced us to figure out the digital side. Livestreams, Zoom small groups, online giving portals, comment-section prayer. We learned a lot in a very short time.
But here’s what we haven’t solved yet: how do you do both, simultaneously, and do them both well?
That’s the phygital church. And that’s exactly what Jay Kranda — Online Pastor at Saddleback Church — unpacks in this episode with hosts Jeff Reed and Rey DeArmas.
Why “Either/Or” Thinking Will Kill Your Strategy
The temptation after a crisis is to snap back to what you knew. Doors reopen, people return to in-person services, and the online ministry gets quietly deprioritized again.
Don’t do it.
The people who showed up online during COVID are not all going to show up in your building the first Sunday things reopen. Some will. Many won’t — not because they’re spiritually lazy, but because digital access genuinely serves them better. The night-shift nurse. The anxious parent with a newborn. The skeptic who would never walk through your doors but will watch from their couch.
If you pull back your digital presence, you’re not returning to normal. You’re abandoning people you just reached.
The phygital model refuses that false choice. It says: we will meet people wherever they are — physically and digitally — and we will build genuine community in both spaces.
What Phygital Actually Looks Like in Practice
This is where most churches stall. The concept sounds great. The execution feels impossible. So let’s make it concrete.
1. Stop treating online as a lesser experience. If your online “strategy” is just a camera pointed at the stage, you’re broadcasting — not ministering. Phygital churches assign real staff or volunteers to the online room during services. Someone is monitoring comments, praying with people in real time, welcoming first-time viewers by name.
2. Build on-ramps that move people between physical and digital. Online attendees should be invited into in-person experiences — not just services, but local events, serve opportunities, and small groups. And your in-person congregation should know that your online community exists and that they’re part of the same church.
3. Design community, not just content. Content gets consumed. Community transforms. Phygital strategy means creating spaces — digital small groups, online prayer teams, geo-based online campuses — where people aren’t just watching but belonging. As the early church demonstrated in Acts 2, people stuck around not just because of the teaching but because of genuine connection.
4. Track people, not just numbers. Views and unique visitors tell you something. But they don’t tell you if someone moved from anonymous observer to named disciple. Build systems — even simple ones — to follow up with online first-timers, connect them to a host, and walk them toward next steps.
Jay Kranda Brings the Receipts
Jay isn’t theorizing about phygital church. He’s been doing it at scale at Saddleback for years. In this episode, he talks candidly about what working models actually look like, where churches tend to get stuck, and how leadership has to shift its thinking to steward both physical and digital congregations faithfully.
This is a conversation for senior pastors, online campus directors, and anyone who senses that the COVID season cracked open a door to something bigger — and doesn’t want to let it close.
The future isn’t physical. It’s not digital. It’s both.
Your Next Step
Listen to the full episode above, then do one thing: pull together your leadership team and ask this honest question — “If we never fully reopen our building, does our current strategy still make disciples?”
If the answer makes you nervous, that’s good. That nervousness is the beginning of a phygital strategy.
Then come back to THECHURCH.DIGITAL — we’ve got more resources to help you build what comes next.
