Quick Note from Joel:

We’re here building an emotionally healthy corner of the internet for Absolutely Everyone. Every Monday, we open up a discussion thread in our Discord server, usually with something to meditate on, and some questions to discuss. We’re going to try posting them here with a link to the Discord discussion if you’d like to hop in and participate!

If you spend any amount of time on the internet interacting with people on the internet, it’s not long before you realize how isolated and disconnected most of us feel. The internet promised us more connection than ever before - it’s baked into the core value proposition of the entire thing. But somehow, most areas of the internet which are supposed to foster connection, leave us feeling more and more disconnected.

It’s worth acknowledging that many of the people here in Hope Digital, feel, or have felt lonely and isolated. For some of us, it’s been a significant struggle in our lives. As we build an emotionally healthy corner of the internet, we are going to find more and more people who are searching for someone to - as the psalmist said, “be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted”.

Finding community, finding connection is the easy answer. But, often times isolation isn’t an easy problem. The nature of some people’s experiences or roles make it risky to open up enough to not be lonely. Other times trauma has damaged people’s natural ability to connect. And sometimes, loneliness spins us into a cycle of bad choices that leave us more lonely and more isolated than we started.

So tonight, we consider two sets of three questions: three about us, and three about others to help us think about loneliness a little differently, and maybe develop some strategies as a group to help tackle it!

First, I want you to think about these three questions - but don’t respond to them on the thread unless you feel comfortable:

1. Have you ever felt isolated and alone?

2. Do you see any shifts in how you act or interact with people when you are feeling isolated and alone? Do any of those shifts increase or decrease your feelings of isolation?

3. What kind of things break you out of periods of isolation?

Now, lets think outside of ourselves - after all we’re building an emotionally healthy corner of the internet for Absolutely Everyone.

1. Do you know someone who you think feels isolated and alone? (Don’t name them)

2. Do you see any shifts in how they act or interact with people online which may correlated to feeling isolated and alone? Do any of those shifts correlate to isolating them further, or increasing the connection with other people?

3. What kinds of ways can we individually or as a community throw people a virtual lifeboat when they’re feeling isolated and alone?

If you’re already on our Discord server, click below for a direct link to the discussion!

Discuss on Discord

If you aren’t, and want to join our Discord server, click below to join!

Join our Discord

• Host names

• What is Hope Digital/Absolutely Everyone

• Tricia’s Birthday!

• 4th of July Parties

Prayer Statement

• Prayer statement slide

Invitation and Care

Invitation

• How do we make friends as adults?

• Why do we invite people to communities?

• What are the barriers to inviting someone to things? What makes it hard?

Care

• What does care really mean?

• Levels of community care

• Healthy boundaries

• “Then I said to them, ‘You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, so that we may no longer suffer disgrace.’”

• “I told them that the hand of my God had been gracious upon me and also the words that the king had spoken to me. Then they said, ‘Let us start building!’”

• “So they committed themselves to the common good. But when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official and Geshem the Arab heard of it, they mocked and ridiculed us, saying, ‘What is this that you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king?’”

• “Then I replied to them, ‘The God of heaven is the one who will give us success, and we his servants are going to start building, but you have no share or claim or memorial in Jerusalem.’” — Neh 2:17-20

• How to care for others in a digital space

• Homework

Affirmations

• Affirmations slide

• Next Scheduled Thing and Invite people to be a part of the launch team

a. Reminder of what Hope Digital is

b. Reminder of what Absolutely Everyone Is

II. Tricia and Joel – talking through our history in church

III. Prayer Statement

a. Reminder of what our prayer statement is to us

b. Show Prayer Statement

IV. Main Topic: What is Church?

a. Encourage chat to submit questions, comments, etc. Mary will be watching and flash things up on the screen for us. Add them here to give us notice that they’re coming!

b. What is Church?

c. What is a faith community?

d. What does it mean to be part of a church? And what do people get from that?

e. What is Worship?

f. What makes an online church different from other online communities even religious ones?

g. Why do people go to any church?

h. What is a church service?

i. What is community?

j. How do people engage in community and churches?

i. Aldersgate says: “I recently visited our Nazerne brothers and sisters across the pond, and at the end of bible study we held hands and prayed, I cried like a baby i haven’t been able to do that since the Church I was raised in, and they also gave me hugs. I felt at home.”

k. Is a digital church different then an in person church?

V. Affirmations

VI. Outro

Credits:

Special thanks to Dave Harsh (Producer) and Mary Ditchen (Chat Moderator) who we could not have done this without!!

Show Outline:

1. Introduction - a little bit about us - 5-10 minutes

   1. Tricia Hermon

   2. Joel Zeinestone

   3. A little bit about ourselves, our church/theological history

2. Hope Digital

   1. What are we? A church

   2. Discord as our church building

   3. Totally new endeavor with a new group of people

   4. We don’t have to figure out what our DNA or our identity is - we already know who we are.

3. Prayer Statement

   1. Using a prayer statement to center our community around who we are and who we want to be.

   2. General practice - introduce the speaker

4. Interview with Jennie

   1. Who is Jennie

   2. College Ministry

   3. Hope Church

   4. Hope Digital Start

   5. Creation of Prayer Statement

   6. What does Absolutely Everyone mean?

   7. How do we protect people? Healthy and Safe

   8. What is theological thought and conversation?

   9. What does it mean to live a Christ Centered life?

5. Questions from the Chat

6. Affirmations

7. Outro

Hey folks, we are here! This Thursday we’ll be doing our very first livestreamed podcast on Discord. We’d love for you to join us live, or listen on the podcast platforms afterwards!

Please join us to learn more about:

• Who we are

• Where we came from

• How we got here

Discord Event

Remember,

Dear God, as Hope Church we pray that this is a place where Absolutely Everyone experiences God’s love, we are a place of theological thought and conversation, and we are a community learning to live Christ-centered lives. Amen.

Since 2014, Hope United Methodist in Bloomington, IL has served as a beacon of God’s love. Every Sunday morning we pray this prayer statement, centering our community around who we are and who we want to be.

For many of those years, something has bothered us. There’s a whole lot of people who can’t make it physically to Hope who need us, or someone like us, and doesn’t even have a local progressive or affirming church at all. Many of these folks turn to the internet for community and acceptance, but even then often times all they find are toxic communities that look nothing like the model of God’s love we’re given.

So, last year, we decided to do something about that, and Hope Digital was born. We are starting Hope Digital as a second-site church plant, but entirely online. We are taking our Hope United Methodist DNA, our prayer statement, and the love and affirmation that we give to everyone who walks through our doors and creating that same beacon of Hope… Digitally!

We have spent most of our first year figuring out how our vision translates to a digital-first community and experiences, and a special thanks to Reverend Sophie Woods for building the foundation that we’re standing on today.

First and foremost, we are building a Church. We choose to build it on Discord - our digital ‘church building’ if you will. This is where we gather, we talk, we pray for each other, we celebrate together, and of course - we worship together. All things that would naturally happen in a church building. Discord gives us the platform that feels most like a ‘building’ - but still adapts to the 24/7 synchronous and asynchronous communication patterns we see in online communities.

It has worked out well so far - we have already seen some incredible stories come out of our community of people finding hope and peace through our church being there for them. Often LGBTQ Christians stuck in small, rural towns in conservative areas turn online to find help and support and are often met with derision and condemnation. A common refrain we hear is “we are too gay for the Christian communities, and too Christian for the gay communities.”

As we build on that foundation, we are preparing to launch a livestreamed podcast - starting with special ‘preview’ episodes while we grow our community and prepare for a fully weekly launch in the future. ‘Absolutely Everyone’ will serve as an anchor for our community, a livestreamed (on Discord) time to come together, center ourselves on our prayer statement, and do the work of learning to live Christ centered lives through interviews with… absolutely everyone, discussions, and live feedback from the chat. It will then be available on the major podcasting platforms.

All told, we are building something special here, and we hope you join us for our journey! You can join us on discord, or subscribe to our podcast once it is up - and of course subscribe to get updates here!

Subscribe now

Now, one final thing here. We are adding a bookend to the other side of the prayer statement. An affirmation you’re going to hear often from us. Whereas the prayer statement is to center our community, this affirmation is to center and anchor ourselves in God’s love as we go out into the chaos of this world.