When communication scientist Holger Sievert first surveyed thousands of Christians in 2023 about their use of the internet and digital opportunities, the Church was just emerging from the pandemic.

Like everywhere else in society, COVID-19 had led to a massive digital push.

Even then, he discovered interesting facts about the state of digitalization in churches that contradicted many clichés.

Now, the study is entering its second round.

In an interview with katholisch.de, the Professor of Communication Management at Macromedia University reveals what he learned the first time and what he hopes to find out now.

He already has useful tips for parishes that want to become more digital.

Professor Sievert, do Christians use the internet differently than other people?

Sievert: In Germany, at least, Christians use the internet more intensively than other people.

There is a common perception that traditional parishes are primarily analog.

However, if you look at the data, members of Christian churches in Germany are about two to three years ahead of the general population regarding their level of digitalization.

That is surprising, given the typical image of a church congregation — and because of church departures and declining religious socialization, church members are on average older than the general population.

That observation only applies to church members as a whole, not to the “core” congregations — there, it is actually the opposite.

However, the older generation is now using digital tools to a much greater extent.

According to the latest SIM study, nearly 90 percent of people over 60 use the internet at least occasionally; compared to previous surveys, the strongest increases were seen in the over-80 age group.

Even seniors have at least a mobile phone to look at pictures of their grandchildren on WhatsApp, for example.

But the actual reason is different: People who stay in the church have, on average, a relatively high standard of education and belong to a comparably higher social milieu.

That is what primarily explains the higher digital affinity, rather than church membership itself.

The “Silver Surfer” target group

What does this mean for church communication strategies?

Church communication should move away from the idea that it reaches people particularly well via print, television, or radio.

The main communication channel is digital, and it must be well-curated and maintained editorially.

Unfortunately, there are still far too many deficits in this area.

You still hear the misunderstanding that you only do digital communication to reach young people.

Yes, you do primarily reach them that way, and you should try to do so.

But the older primary target group of church publishing and public relations has long been much more digital than the cliché suggests.

The “Silver Surfer” is a much more realistic target group for church communication than a seventeen-year-old.

So the people are there — but do they want to be reached with Christian content? The Church Membership Survey found that less than a third of church members use digital media at least sometimes for religion-related purposes. Is it realistic to try to reach the other two-thirds?

Yes, and it often works already.

When you ask in detail which channels are used and perceived, significantly higher values emerge.

In our last DiRK study three years ago, for example, nearly 50 percent stated that they use their own parish’s website frequently or very frequently.

The DiRK study is an online survey for which participants are heavily recruited from the church sector, including professionals. How much can your results be generalized?

They are not completely representative, nor is the study designed to be.

However, if you remove the partially over-represented church employees from our data and re-weight the rest based on the demographic characteristics of church members, it shows we are very close.

The results are not systematically distorted and allow for general conclusions.

Above all, they allow us to look very closely at individual subgroups.

Younger pastors, less digital

Let’s look at the professionals nonetheless. What stands out there?

One example is full-time pastoral workers.

The most digitally-inclined among pastors and other pastoral workers are between 50 and 60 years old.

In our survey, the younger this group is, the less digital they are on average.

It seems that younger representatives of these groups choose their profession, among other reasons, because they want to differentiate themselves from the societal mainstream.

But of course, there are singular examples of fantastic young influencers in pastoral professions.

For successful digital ministry, would the church have to attract different types of people than those currently drawn to church careers?

Yes, if things were just left to run their course, the church would tend to become more conservative and less digital — this applies to both the Protestant and Catholic churches.

But there are a number of initiatives addressing this.

At the same time, we see a very strong, visually powerful, opinionated, and media-savvy conservative Christian clientele abroad.

That is something we will be surveying for the first time in the new study.

We are not just looking at who follows Christian influencers, but also which countries and contexts these influencers come from and which religious convictions of the respondents they correlate with.

One guess might be that of the nearly 20 percent of study participants who regularly notice influencers, many follow U.S. influencers — that is, from a culture where religion has a completely different role in society and, currently, especially in politics.

That would be the neutral description of this phenomenon.

In Germany, churches are trying to build their own influencers; the scene seems much closer to the institution.

Especially in the Protestant sector, there are officially supported initiatives like the yeet network.

But when you look at the reach, these are at best in the mid-range internationally.

That’s why I’m curious to see what our new survey reveals about which influencers are actually being noticed in Germany.

A recipe for local parishes

Not every parish has people who can or want to be influencers — yet parishes still need a digital strategy. How do you approach this?

Primarily, it should be about being as well-connected locally as possible.

A parish should report on what it does in relevant places online and should do so in connection with as many other local actors as possible.

I’m thinking of diverse clubs and institutions to strengthen the local digital community.

People often focus only on local accounts that radiate nationally.

That isn’t a requirement you have to set for yourself.

Ideally, you do what you already do as a pastor, pastoral worker, or youth leader in the physical community and try to live that out digitally as well.

The second thing is to look at demand.

During the pandemic, online devotions and services were very widespread because in-person meetings weren’t possible.

It’s a pity that these have become much less frequent, because there are still many people who want such offers.

In the last DiRK study, over 55 percent stated this.

With digital offerings, you can enable digital participation in the parish for people who, for whatever reason, cannot be there in person.

This could be for health reasons, because they have moved away, or because they are very busy as a young family.

In my view, that is the recipe for success: Local networking on social media and a digital, low-threshold presence for people in both older and younger age groups, as well as others who are not as mobile.

Are the necessary resources available in the parishes for this?

It is work, no question.

But with a proper concept, it is manageable.

The actual effort is developing a basic structure at the beginning, just as you do for any parish concept.

Social media, in particular, can be distributed across many shoulders — it’s something that candidates for confirmation could get involved in.

The point is that the church has to ask itself what it wants to achieve in the future: Where does the church still want to be relevant, and how does it reach people with its message and its themes?

My approach is: The church must go where the people are — and today, that is very much in the digital sphere.

Conversely, this naturally doesn’t mean giving up in-person offerings too much — because the future of the church will, above all, be hybrid!

• Felix Neumann is editor at katholisch.de and vice-chairman of the Society of Catholic Publicists (GKP).
• This English version was first published in katholisch.de. Republished with permission.