Early on in quarantine, I used social media to fill in the gaps of what went missing in my social life due to COVID-19. I tuned in to cocktail classes on Instagram, played games with friends over Zoom, and even took a workout class on Facebook Live. Because of this continued connectedness, quarantine hasn’t felt too lonely.

We rely on social media everyday. For quick news bytes, connecting with long-lost family and friends, and even as a job board. Now, in the face of a pandemic, we are using social media to be the church. To engage others in a service over Facebook, share quarantine recipes on Instagram, and catch news that will inform how the church serves the world around us.

It’s been said that church communicators wear many hats. We’re creating engaging graphics (or at least trying), telling interesting stories (that are hopefully grammatically correct), providing IT support (did you try restarting it?), and if your job has shifted like mine during this pandemic, you’re trying to stay calm as you stare at Adobe Premiere, editing another Offertory Anthem video due in an hour. Set it all in a once organized home office, add Zoom meetings for days and a seven-month-old puppy trying to capitalize on all my time, and you, my friends, have a current snapshot of my life.

It may sound like bad times, but the good news is it’s a mess. You’re probably thinking, “messes are bad, and this guy has clearly lost it”. I probably have, but I am writing to encourage you all to embrace the mess.

As a church communicator, I believe that most parishioners don’t want to hear that everything is great, or that we have all the answers. People need to hear that we and God are with them. When things get messy, that message is life-changing. If all you can do one Sunday is a horribly pixelated live-stream with bad audio, it tells your audience that you will do whatever you can to reach them, even if it’s a struggle. As communicators, we get to remind people that we are traveling together and our journey is missional. Messy is authentic. Searching for that authenticity is what drives my aesthetic.