by Peggy Hahn, LEAD Executive Director
This is as real as it gets. My mom, on the computer, talking with my granddaughter, her great granddaughter. Two people who are very weary of quarantine. They need each other, because isolation is hard on the elderly and on children. It is heart-wrenching. Yet they have each other.
We can never again question the validity of digital love. It is right here. Heart to heart.
We can see the digital world for what it is. A gift from God. Can I get a collective “Thank You”?
I know we may not prefer this, or we may feel like our learning curve is steep, but we can never discount what is happening around us.
Our world isn’t changing. It HAS changed. TA-DA! Here it is.
Now what?
We can be digital relationship brokers. The conversation in this photo is happening because my daughter made the connection possible. She is the one who said, “you two need each other.” Later, she told me they talked for 45 minutes. Now they are talking every day.
This is not a survival tactic. This is what thriving looks like.
Where are the digital brokers in your world? Can you call them into action; literally, let them know that you need them to be open to the Holy Spirit’s prompting to connect people of every generation that they can? It is person to person, heart to heart that makes this pandemic bearable. Even if we are starting to go back to some form of new normal, we cannot leave this behind. In fact, more than ever, as summer hits and camps are cancelled, how will we get the generations together? Brokering these moments is going to bring a beautiful river of love that will help us make sense out of the new world.
Digital brokers are connecting neighbors, family, and people who have never come to church before with each other. The people who are showing up to digital church are not the “others.” God is doing a new thing right now and these people are the church.
Digital brokers are inviting people into small groups to pray, digitally, after digital worship. They are encouraging people to get their own digital groups going – we won’t control or manage this, it is the Holy Spirit working in and through us. We are called together and SENT for the sake of the good news. Digital brokers are leading us into what it means to love our neighbor as our self, online.
In the Nebraska Synod we’re having discussions about how to encourage and equip people to have caring, faithful conversations. A list of curated resources that could possibly be used by the digital relationship brokers of which you write is available in a shared Google doc. Here’s the link if it would be helpful to anyone: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12l24zqMPU3NbWrRVV_lZt6279l4jP0EOmGkMwNTguQs/edit