Faith Formation in a Digital World – Lifelong Faith

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National Conference
Formation & Mission in a Digital World
August 26-28, 2016

Presenter: John Roberto, LifelongFaith Associates (jroberto@lifelongfaith.com)

Online Resources

www.LifelongFaith.com
www.SeasonsofAdultFaith.com

www.CuratingFaithFormation.com

www.ReimagineFaithFormation.com
www.FamiliesattheCenter.com
www.VibrantFaithatHome.org

Network Faith Formation

Faith formation can now be developed as a network of relationships, content, experiences, and resources—
integrating a wide variety of engaging and interactive content and experiences in online and
physical settings to engage all people today. We are moving away from the “one-size-fits-all”
approach, which characterizes so much of faith formation today, towards a diversity of ways to
grow in faith and a variety of faith formation opportunities that are designed around the needs and
interests of people. People are at the center of a network approach. We can design faith formation
so that it adapts to individuals, groups, and families instead of expecting them to adapt to the programs (content,
schedules, requirements) offered them by the congregation?

A network approach is made possible by a web of environments that include churches, community
organizations, libraries, museums, and schools/colleges; and by a web of digital resources,
websites, and online communities. A network model of faith formation curates content and
experiences from a wide variety of sources, presents that content on a digital platform, and guides
parents and families in connecting content with needs and interests, creating personal/family
pathways for faith growth.

There are three important programming practices which guide the development of a faith
formation network.

1. Provide a variety of content (experiences, programs, activities, resources) to address the life

tasks and situations, needs and interests, and spiritual and faith journeys of all parents and
families today.

2. Utilize a variety of environments and methods to engage all families, anytime and anywhere, in a
variety of settings—independent, mentored, at home, in small groups, in large groups,
church-wide, in the community, and in the world.

3. Become digitally enabled—blending gathered community settings with online learning

environments and utilizing the abundance of digital media and tools for learning and faith
formation; and digitally connected—linking faith formation at church, with peers, in the
community, and at home using online and digital media.

Imagine designing a faith formation network for families with children (0-10 years old) with
developmentally-appropriate children’s activities, whole family activities, and parent activities that
implements these programming practices: variety of content, variety of approaches and methods,

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and digitally-enabled and digitally-connected strategies. The family faith formation network would
use strategies presented, tailored to families with young children and older children. It would
incorporate the eight faith-forming processes—caring relationships, celebrating church year
seasons, celebrating rituals and milestones, learning, prayer and spiritual formation, reading the
Bible, serving and working for justice, and worshipping; and include parent formation and family
life development.

Each content area of the network would have a variety of content—church and community
programs and resources, digital media, links to online content at other websites, and more.
Programming in each content area can be developed into faith formation playlists. This is similar to a
music playlist where we curate and gather our favorite songs into our own “albums” for listening.
A faith formation playlist curates content around a theme into an integrated learning plan that
provides a variety of programming and a vareity ways to learn.

The “Just for Parents” playlist offers a variety of ways for you to enhance and enrich your knowledge and
skills for parenting children and teens. All of these programs, activities, and resources are developed
around research-tested ways to help your children and teens grow in healthy and positive ways by 1)
expressing care, 2) challenging them to growth, 3) providing them with support, 4) involving them in
decision-making, and 5) expanding their possibilities for the future.

1. Participate in the “First Wednesdays” Webinar Series—without leaving your home!
2. Use a variety of activities to build positive relationships at home.
3. Learn more about your children and teenager.
4. Participate in a Small Group Study with the best selling book The Secrets of Happy Families by

5. Watch the video: “Parenting for the Long Haul” and download the “9 Parenting Strategies”

Bruce Feiler

guide.

6. Strengthen family relationships with stories.
7. Discover parenting resources.

Designing a Season of Faith Formation Programming

The most manageable way to program a faith formation network is to develop a three-season
approach: January–April, May–August, and September–December. This means launching new
programming three times and year and completing updating your website three times a year with
the new programming as well as recurring programming.

All of the network content areas do not need to be introduced in the first season of programming.
Over the course of a year (three seasons) network content areas and programming can be added so
that the complete plan is finally implemented in the fourth season. Some of the programming will
be consistent in every season, while other programming will be specific to a season. Programming
from a completed season is archived online (on the website) so that it can be reused in another
season or re-introduced a year later.

Here is a guide to developing one season of programming.

1. Identify the season: January 1–May 1 or May 1–September 1 or September 1–January 1.

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2. Add continuing programs to the seasonal plan. Use the seasonal plan template to record
the results: list the network content areas and then add the programs to the appropriate
month.

3. Add intergenerational events and programs to the seasonal plan.

4. Add new programming to the seasonal plan. Try to provide new (or current) programs
in different learning environments and/or one program in multiple learning environments:
on your own (self-directed), with a mentor, at home, in small groups, in large groups, in
the congregation, in the community, in the world. Try to implement a program idea
with a blended (digital) faith formation strategy: gathered program with online content,
gathered program and online content, online and gathered in one program, mostly
online, and fully online.

5. Develop the final version of the seasonal plan. Select the program ideas for each

network content area. Some content areas may have too many programs to launch in
one season. Select the ones that will be included in this season and save the other
program ideas for another season.

6. Schedule programming in each network content area. Some of the programming flows

through multiple months in a season, such as a weekly Bible study group. Some
programs are monthly, while other programs are seasonal—Advent, Christmas, Lent,
and Easter—and therefore anchored in one or more months. Still other
programming/resources are always available, such as an online course or a video
program or Bible study resources.

One way to manage the variety of programming is to focus on one month of major
programming in the network content areas. For example the “Learning the Tradition”
content area might select one month to schedule its theology enrichment series with
four presentations from guest experts and options for small group study and online
study using the video recordings. The Bible area might focus its programming in
different month, perhaps around a church year season, such as Lent. This approach
reduces the overlap among major programming and helps people participate in multiple
experiences.

7. Develop faith formation playlists. This is similar to a music playlist where we curate and

gather our favorite songs into our own “albums” for listening. A faith formation playlist
curates content around a theme into an integrated learning plan that provides a variety
of programming and a vareity ways to learn.

8. Develop specific plans for each program (when needed): date or month, programming

environment(s), digital strategy(s), resources, leaders, and cost.

Seasonal Plan

Network Content Area

Programming & Dates
Month 1 Month 2 Month 3 Month 4

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Building the Digital Platform for Faith Formation

This digital platform provides the primary way to connect parents and families to the network’s
offerings and to connect parents and families with each other. A faith formation website provides
the platform for publishing and delivering the experiences, content, programs, activities, and
resources of the network. A website provides the platform for seamless learning across a variety of
experiences, resources, locations, times, or settings. The website, together with social media,
provides continuity between faith formation in the congregation, at home, in daily life, and online.
And it is available to people anytime, anywhere, and any device (computer, tablet, smart phone).

Building a website is made much easier today by the availability of online website builders that
provide predesigned website templates, drag-and-drop features to create webpages, and hosting for
the website. Three popular website builders to explore are: Weebly (www.weebly.com), Wix
(www.wix.com), and Squarespace (www.squarespace.com). All three have easy to use features and
very reasonable subscription fees. For advanced users WordPress (http://wordpress.org) provides
thousands of predesigned templates, lots of customization features, and ready-to-use apps.
WordPress does require an understanding of web design and some programming ability. Weebly, Wix,
and Squarespace have detailed tutorials for designing on their websites or on YouTube.

Here are several suggestions for web usability from Steve Krug’s excellent and easy-to-use book
Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability.

1. Don’t make the user think—make web pages self-explanatory so the user hardly has any

perceived effort to understand them, or example, clear choice of labels, clearly
“clickable” items, simple search.

2. People generally don’t read web pages closely; they scan, so design for scanning rather

than reading.

3. Create a clear visual hierarchy and menu system (main menu, submenus).
4. Make it very clear how to navigate the site, with clear “signposts” on all pages.
5. Omit needless words.
6. The home page needs the greatest design care to convey site identity and mission.
7. Promote user goodwill by making the typical tasks easy to do, make it easy to recover

from errors, and avoid anything likely to irritate users.

Design Suggestions

First, choose a domain name (URL) for the faith formation website. The congregation can either
purchase a new domain name for the faith formation website from one of the companies that sell
and register domain names or use a free domain name provided by the website builder, e.g., Weebly
provides hosting and a free website URL with the weebly.com extension.

Second, select a website template that is mobile-responsive, which means that the website will
automatically size-itself correctly on a computer, laptop, tablet, or phone. The template should do
this automatically.

Third, create the primary navigation (main menus) for the website directly from the network
content areas. Be sure to select a website template that allows enough room for all of the menu
items to be seen. Today’s website design favors horizontal menus (running across the webpage),

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rather than vertical menus (running on the left side of the webpage). Select the template that
provides enough room for the menus. There may be a need to consolidate several content areas to
accommodate the website design template. This involves creating submenus (secondary
navigation) under the main menu items. A well-designed site with clear and easy to understand
navigation will increase engagement and the time people spend on the website.

Fourth, build each webpage to incorporate all of the programs, activities, and resources for a
particular network content area for the seasonal plan. A well-designed site with quality content
will increase engagement and create a positive experience for the user—all of which encourages
continuous learning. Each webpage includes content that is uploaded to the website for people to
use—audio podcasts, videos, articles, blog posts, interactive features—as well as descriptions and
links to programs, activities, and resources that reside on other websites, such as online courses.
Webpages can include stable content that is going to be available in every season and seasonal or
calendar-specific content.

Each webpage is a playlist where people can learn online, download resources, and connect to
activities and resources across the web. Here are two examples of faith formation website design—
one for adults and one for parents: www.SeasonsofAdultFaith.com, www.FamiliesattheCenter.com.

Fifth, design the website specifically for your target audiences and write the content for them in
their language with titles and examples that connect to their lives; select images (photo or short
video) that reflect their life situations. Engage the target audience and tell them what they need to
know and do.

Be sure to pay careful attention to the titles and descriptions so that they capture people’s interests.
Develop descriptions that are positive in tone, indicate clearly the content or focus of an activity.
Describe how your offerings respond to something within the lives of people. Highlight the
relationship between the content and the particular spiritual or religious needs, interests, passions,
concerns, or life issues of people. Describe the 2-3 benefits of participating or engaging in faith
formation.

Programming Environments

Faith formation incorporates seven program environments, in online spaces and physical places, to
provide a variety of ways for people to learn and grow in faith that respects their preferred styles of
learning, their life situations, and their time constraints. The seven environments provide a way to
offer a diversity of programs in different learning environment, as well as to offer the same
program content in multiple learning environments—all of which provides people with more
options to participate in faith formation and broadens the scope of faith formation offerings. The
seven environments include:

Independent. Independent programming provides maximum flexibility to participate in faith
formation, so they can decide when, how, where, and what they will experience. With the
increasing number and variety of books and printed resources, audio podcasts, video presentations,
video programs, online courses, and online resource centers, independent faith formation offers a
24/7 approach to faith growth and learning for busy people today. Congregations can serve as
guide to helping then find the best format and content to address their needs, and then deliver that
programming online through the faith formation website.

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With a Mentor or Coach. Mentoring or coaching provides a one-to-one relationship that can be
utilized in a variety of faith formation programming. Examples: a mentor/coach can work with
parent/ who are having a child baptized and provide individualized faith formation around the life
situations and religious-spiritual needs of the parents; most congregations have a group of willing
mentors/coaches in the grandparent generation. Mentors can be developed for each person in the
Christian initiation process or for those who want to explore Jesus and Christianity after leaving
church earlier in life. Mentoring works older to younger, but also younger to older as in the case of
young people mentoring older adults on the use of digital tools and media.

At Home. At home programming provides individuals, parents, and whole families with faith
formation programs, activities, and resources designed for use at home or in daily life, and
delivered in a variety of ways including a faith formation website or social media. With the
abundance of high quality digital content congregations can provide programs and resources, such
as online learning programs, resources for the church year seasons, Sunday worship resources,
online communities and support groups, and links to online faith formation resources and resource
centers.

In Small Groups. Small-group programming provides an excellent way to address a diversity of
needs and life situations by organizing a variety of small groups with each one targeted to a
particular need or topic. Small groups provide lots of flexibility in schedule and location. Groups
can meet at times and places that best fit members’ lives, such as group that meets for breakfast
weekly at the local restaurant or for coffee at a local coffee shop. Small groups create an accepting
environment in which new relationships can be formed. It is not always necessary for the
congregation to sponsor small group programs. Congregational leaders can provide resources,
support, and training for leaders, thereby enabling parents and families to organize their own small
groups. Small group programming learning can take many different forms including:

• discipleship or faith sharing groups or study groups such as Bible study groups, theme
or issue oriented study groups, Sunday lectionary-based faith sharing groups, book
study groups

• practice-focused groups such as parenting skills and spiritual formation
•

support groups for people at different life stages, e.g., for parents at different stages of
family life: young children, older children, younger adolescents, older adolescents, and
emerging adults
support groups for kindred groups, such as caregiver groups, single parents, blended
families, divorced parents, parents with children who suffer from serious illnesses, and
more

•

In Large Groups. Large-group programming provides a way to address a faith theme, topic or
issue that engages a wide diversity of people:

• multi-session programs, such as multi-week courses on theological themes, books of

the Bible, parenting at particular stages of family life, life issues)

• multi-session programs, such as a parenting courses for each life stage: young children,

•

older children, younger adolescents, older adolescents, and emerging adults
family programming on faith themes, seasonal celebrations, social events, service days,
and more that can be sponsored weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or seasonally
• one-session program, such as a monthly session on a theological topic or parent

enrichment

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•

speaker series, such as a multi-evening or multi-week program focused around
particular theological themes, Christian practices, current events, the season of the
church year, life issues, family life issues, and more

• activities and discussion after Sunday worship for the community to explore and
experience the Sunday readings in age groups or family/intergenerational groups
• parent parallel learning program for parents while they their children are engaged in

age-appropriate learning

• workshops, such as one day programs targeted to specific life issues—parenting, mid-
life issues, aging, and more; for example workshops for parents or the whole family
targeted to specific family life issues: communication, parenting skills, building a strong
family, managing family time, developing technology rules, and more
film festivals that explore important life and faith themes that can be followed with
activities and discussions

•

• week or weekend at Christian camp
•

retreat experiences in an evening, one-day, or weekend format at church or at a retreat
center

• mission trip organized by the church: local, domestic, international – for age groups, for

whole families, for intergenerational groups
intergenerational programs for all ages in the congregation

•

The Congregation. Congregational programming focuses on the events already present in the life
of the church: Sunday worship, the feasts and seasons of the church year, sacramental and ritual
celebrations, works of justice and acts of service, prayer experiences, spiritual traditions, and
events that originate within the life and history of a individual congregation. Faith formation can
provide experiences for people to prepare—with the appropriate knowledge and practices—for
participation in the central events of church life and the Christian faith and to guide their
participation and reflection upon those events.

In the Community and World. Programming in the community and world provides a way for
congregations to utilize existing programs and activities outside the church as part of a faith
formation plan. This involves researching the resources and programs (programs, courses, clinics,
workshops, presentations, and more) being offered by community organizations; schools,
community colleges and universities; retreat centers and Christian camps; YMCAs; libraries;
bookstores, and more. Many organizations—locally and nationally—have already created programs
and activities that be adopted by the congregation. This is an important environment for
developing initiatives for serving, working for justice, and caring for creation. Many
organizations—locally, nationally, and globally—have already created programs that be adopted by
the congregation.

Digital Enabled Strategies

Faith formation is digitally enabled—blending gathered community settings with online learning
environments and utilizing the abundance of digital media and tools for learning and faith
formation; and digitally connected—linking faith formation at church, with peers, in the community,
and at home using online and digital media.

Faith formation can now utilize digital technologies and digital media to engage parents and
families with faith-forming content anytime, anyplace, and just-in-time—and extend and expand

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faith formation from physical, face-to-face settings into their daily lives through digital content and
mobile delivery systems. Online platforms for faith formation (websites) integrate the content
(programs, activities, resources), connect people to the content and to each other, provide
continuity for people across different learning experiences, and make everything available anytime,
anywhere, 24x7x365.

We now have access to new digital methods and media for reaching and engaging people—social
media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more), webinars and online learning, video conferencing,
videos, audio podcasts, and much more. All of these methods and media expand the opportunities
to engage everyone in faith formation. For example: How are we providing mobile content for a
family to use at the dinner table, in the car, in the morning or at bedtime, or for a mom or dad to
use while they wait for their children participating in sports, music, arts?

A faith formation website provides the platform for publishing and delivering faith formation
experiences, content, programs, activities, and resources; and for engaging people in learning and
faith formation. Increasingly churches will need to see themselves not as exclusive providers of
faith formation, but as platforms for bringing meaningful and engaging learning experiences to
adults and for guiding them to such experiences elsewhere. A website provides the platform for
seamless learning across a variety of experiences, resources, locations, times, or settings. The
website, together with social media, provides continuity between faith formation in the
congregation, at home, in daily life, and online.

Faith formation incorporates blended models of faith formation to connect physical settings and
online settings. The new digital tools, digital media, and online platforms connect people’s
participation in church life and events and in programs with their daily and home; and can reach
people at home, at work, and in daily life with personalized and customized faith formation
content and experiences. Faith formation today can integrate online and face-to-face learning,
blending them in a variety of ways from online programs with minimal interaction in physical
settings to programs in physical settings that utilize online content or extend the program using
online content.

Faith formation utilizes five blended strategies (below) in designing new programming, re-
designing existing programming, surrounding events and programs with online content, and
selecting a variety of digital programs, activities, and resources that can be used alone (fully online)
or used in conjunction with face-to-face programs.

Blended Faith Formation

Fully Online
An online
program with
all learning
done online
and limited
face-to-face,
gathered
learning
settings

Mostly Online
A mostly online
program with
opportunities
for regular
interaction in
face-to-face,
gathered
settings

Online and
Gathered
Online learning
focused on presenting
the content of the
program combined with
face-to-face, gathered
sessions using active
learning methods to
discuss, practice and
apply the content.

Gathered and
Online Content
A gathered event
or program that
provides online
content and
activities to extend
and expand the
learning from the
gathered program

Gathered with
Online
Content

A gathered
event or
program that
uses online
content as part
of the design of
the event or
program

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