Discover practical strategies for churches to thrive in the attention economy by creating meaningful digital spaces and fostering deeper connections in this episode of the MyCom Church Marketing and Communications Podcast.
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In this episode
With endless digital content competing for our focus, let's explore the impact of technology on church engagement, share practical strategies for creating meaningful connections online, and invite churches to become sanctuaries for attention—places where people's presence is honored rather than exploited. Whether you're a church communicator, leader, or just curious about ministry in the digital age, this episode offers thoughtful ideas and actionable tips for making your church story stand out with purpose and peace.
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- [110] Branching out through digital discipleship
- [103] Mastering two-way communications with Katie Allred
Episode transcript
Ryan Dunn [00:00:00]:
I've been thinking about attention lately. There's so much demanding our attention and we're exhausted. So can our churches add to alleviate or expose the suffering of the demands on our attention? Welcome to the Church Marketing and Communications Podcast. We share practical tools and creative ideas for sharing your church's story story and reaching your community. I'm Ryan Dunn and today we're diving into a challenge that affects all of us. How to be the church in the Attention economy? Let's face it, there's more content being created than any of us can actually consume. And while information is infinite, attention is not infinite. If you find value in episodes like this, you can definitely share your appreciation by hitting the subscribe button on your podcast listening platform.
Ryan Dunn [00:01:03]:
Then go ahead and leave a comment or review about your appreciation regarding mycom and maybe even suggest a topic or two we could explore for you. Thank you. I recently read the Siren's Call, a book by journalist Chris Haynes. In the book, Haynes theorizes that we've entered a new age of human existence. We're familiar with the industrial age, and the challenge of the industrial age was that there was an ever growing demand for goods and products. But with we were always limited by available resources in raw materials and human labor to meet the growing demand. We're now in the information age, when information is nearly infinite in supply, but our human ability to consume the information is limited. There's only so much time that we have in the day, there's only so much room on the screen, there's only so many pathways available for us to consume all this info.
Ryan Dunn [00:02:01]:
So attention and is the premium resource in this age. The primary aim then of these data dealers, these people who've kind of commodified the information, is to garner human attention. In short, we live in an economy that we can claim is based on attention. Now, the idea of an attention economy goes back to the 1960s, but it's become more relevant than ever in our digital world today. Economist Herbert Simon framed it like this quote, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. End quote. And that's because we can only absorb so much of this information. In simple terms.
Ryan Dunn [00:02:45]:
Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok are not just competing to give us content, they're really competing for our attention. And they're very good at it. Your attention is a valuable commodity. Tech companies know it, advertisers know it, politicians know it, and whether we realize it or not, our churches are feeling the impact of it. Let's put it into a little perspective. Digital data doubles Every two years. That means that we're not just fighting for screen time. We're fighting against an ever increasing flood of noise.
Ryan Dunn [00:03:24]:
It was easier to be heard a couple of years ago now than it is today. The psalms say that there's nowhere that we can go where God is not. And today there's not very many places that we can go where something is not. Actively seeking to hijack your attention. In fact, most of us carry masterful attention grabbers in our pockets at all times. These pings and alerts on our smartphones are meant to pull our attention probably to a commodified piece of information. In many ways, we're no longer in an information economy, we're actually in an attention economy. They're making money when we recognize that ping or alert.
Ryan Dunn [00:04:06]:
Since 2009, church participation in the United States has been in a pretty steady decline. Barner reported that nearly half of Americans, actually 48%, attended church in a given week back then. This is again back in 2009. Back by 2020, that number had dropped to under 30%. Or here's another stat that might catch our attention. Median worship attendance in United States churches went from 110 people in the pews in 2009 to 65 in 2020. That's a major shift. I've made 2009 my focal point for this shift because that's around the time that smartphones really took off.
Ryan Dunn [00:04:49]:
The the iPhone was introduced in 2007. More smartphones hit the market the following year. In 2009, we were just starting to embrace the devices. In 2009, I was a youth pastor at a mid sized church. We had a fabulous space for our youth to meet. In fact, that youth room may have been one of the things that attracted me to that job. Not just that it was like really well set up and it had two screens and a hazer and all that stuff. But that such an investment was made reflected to me a real value in youth ministry and in discipling young people.
Ryan Dunn [00:05:29]:
In the back of this youth room was a computer lab. We had like eight or nine computers there, all set up to usher students onto the Internet so that they could like check their MySpace pages or play flash animations. In 2009, those computers were always in use. At our youth events. We usually had a waiting list and we had to limit usage to 15 minutes. Now by 2011, there was no more waiting list. In fact, there were just like five or six die hard students who loved showing each other their favorite online games or YouTube videos. But that was about it.
Ryan Dunn [00:06:07]:
By 2013, we sold off all the computers and repurposed the space storage. Nobody was using the computers anymore. Now, two things were happening simultaneously through this era. One was that students didn't care about the computers anymore. Most were now constantly online, thanks to their smartphones. Secondly, we had started to see fewer students consistently attend our events. Now, the introduction of smartphones to youth culture was. Wasn't just a technological change.
Ryan Dunn [00:06:42]:
It was a behavioral change. People's habits shifted. In fact, this goes way beyond youth culture. I think that this was happening to the whole culture at large. We didn't always recognize what was happening at the time. So as we looked at our shrinking numbers in our youth programs, we blamed program fatigue, we blamed lack of charisma, as in, like, we just weren't cool enough. Or we blamed outside competition. You know, those travel sports teams and academics demanded more and more of students time.
Ryan Dunn [00:07:15]:
But the deeper truth was we were losing the attention game. We just didn't know it. The trend is still happening today. I think some of us in our fond nostalgia assumed that when Covid regulations were lifted, we wouldn't just return to our 2019 frame of existence. I think we thought that we would jump back to our 2009 frame of existence. Of course, now that we're here in 2025, we recognize that neither happened. We continued on the participatory slide that began all the way back in 2009. What we're seeing is that this attention economy is really rough on churches.
Ryan Dunn [00:08:00]:
A huge issue for us, I mean, us being the church in this attention economy is that we often have to engage on platforms that don't share our values. For example, social media platforms reward content that keeps people scrolling. Facebook reportedly is four times more likely to expose a post, show a post, put eyeballs on a post that provokes anger or outrage. That's good business for them, because the more time people spend arguing, the more ad dollars Facebook earns. But as the church, our call is not really to stoke division. Our message is good news. Yes, sometimes this is provocative. Put up a post that tells people that God loves everybody, it brings out some disagreement.
Ryan Dunn [00:08:52]:
But we don't do these things for the sake of reaction. It's for the sake of transformation. But TikTok and Instagram, they don't make money off of our good intentions. They make money off of when we spend an hour or two poking at the proverbial canker sore that's worn on our consciousness by the latest reports of canceled celebrities or military conflicts. So how do we faithfully navigate this world. What makes for a faithful digital strategy for our ministries? Well, one answer is to focus on personalization of over performance. Now maybe I'm preaching to myself here, but it's going to help to let go of the idea that my messages in digital space are going to hit the same visibility or engagement numbers of other content creators. And this is tough.
Ryan Dunn [00:09:47]:
When I was in youth ministry, trainers and ministry coaches always warned against comparing youth group sizes. But you show up to your youth specialties conference and it's what everybody was doing, right? How many kids are in your youth group? In this information age, it's really easy to get those numbers for comparison. Now, whether that be a rough estimate of worship attendance to the number of likes that another church's posts get, the comparison game is definitely the comparison trap in this day and age because it can so quickly lead us away from our mission. We don't need to be viral. We need to be present to the people God has called us to serve. And that means defining your audience, narrowing your focus, and then just trying to show up consistently. Brady Shearer of the Pro Church Tools podcast often mentions seeking viral for you posts and having no zero weeks. Meaning seek reaching your people, not all the people, and make sure that you're showing up in your church's digital spaces.
Ryan Dunn [00:10:57]:
And every week author Matt Johnson calls this being micro famous. So you're not known by everyone, but you're being deeply known by the people who matter most to your mission. And by the way, I did a pastoring in the Digital Parish episode with Matt Johnson back in 2021. I will link that in the show notes. It's okay to be niche. In fact, it's pretty strategic to be niche. We do hope that the church reaches the world, of course, but your church or my church is not going to reach the entire world. So define your niche, then show up for that niche and there's an opportunity here.
Ryan Dunn [00:11:40]:
Ryan Panzer was another guest on the Pastoring in the Digital Parish podcast link in the show notes Lately Ryan talks about creating digital spaces that that serve as faith based digital sabbaths. These are experiences that disrupt the scroll with scripture reflection and prayer. And that might look like a short meditative Instagram carousel. It might look like a reflective email newsletter. It might look like a prayer podcast episode. The point isn't just to be another voice in the feed, it's to offer a break from the feed. And that leads to a powerful concept. What if churches became attention sanctuaries? So imagine a place physically and digitally where people could rest reflect and encounter God without the constant tug of notifications or algorithms and outrage.
Ryan Dunn [00:12:39]:
A space where attention isn't exploited but kind of honored. So what can you do right now? Well, define your digital audience. Who are you called to reach and what matters to them? And then seek to go deep into that audience, not, not necessarily wide. So don't try to be everywhere, but be where your people are and be consistent there. And then create moments of peace in the scroll. Share content that feels like a pause, scripture, prayer, short meditations. Share a witness or testimony, and then resist the urge to provoke. Just for engagement, remember your your mission isn't clicks, it's connection.
Ryan Dunn [00:13:21]:
Offer alternatives to that attention economy and consider some screen free events within your ministry context. Maybe some kind of digital fast or a Sabbath inspired campaign. Now we're not going to be able to out shout the Internet, but we're not really called to do that. We're called to be salt and light. And that's to stand out really, not by volume, but to stand out by a sense of presence, shining light into the places where the church is exemplifying the lived out kingdom of our Creator on Earth. In the attention economy, then presence is prophetic. It's an invitation to be churches that honor people's attention rather than exploit it. And we can then be communities that remind people that they're more than consumers.
Ryan Dunn [00:14:12]:
I am really appreciative of you spending your attention here today on my comm. If this episode was helpful to you, I'd love for you to share it with a colleague or church communicator who you know. And don't forget to subscribe to the Mycom podcast for more conversations like this. And if you've already subscribed, well, the next step is to leave a comment, rating or review that helps us know what's valuable for you in a podcast like this and helps us to reach out to new people. MICOM is a production of United Methodist Communications. Thanks to Renee McNeil, Patty Dellabovi, AJ Thurman, and Andrew Schleicher for production and marketing support. My name is Ryan Dunn. Mycom comes out near the end of each month, so I'll be back with more support for your church communications and marketing in a few weeks.
Ryan Dunn [00:15:02]:
Until then, peace.