Apps as Mediators of Online and Offline Church Experiences

Last week's concluding statement shows the idea of the Epic Church that I have gathered thus far:

"The apparent mission of the Epic church is centered on drawing in new believers, youth, minorities, and Philadelphians into the faith. They want to pave the way for a tight-knit yet diverse community centered on Jesus' teachings through casual communication and a relaxed atmosphere."

This week, I have downloaded and navigated through the Epic Church - Philadelphia app in order to further understand the Epic Church's relationship with digital media. The app design follows the visually aesthetic detail of the website, but is surprisingly a lot more simple. The app consists of the following functionalities:

Aside from the front page of the app presented above, if you swipe left to reach the second page of functionalities, there is also a settings option to clear caches, but that's the only other thing available in the app aside from the previously shown front page. The amount of functionalities and information about the Epic Church in the app is very small. There is virtually no information on the Epic Church or its mission on the app, nor a button to redirect us to their website. It is because of this that I believe the app is meant to be solely and uniquely for people who are already members of the community and who need a fast-access framework to access podcasts or videos on the religious services offered by the Epic Church. It could also be used to look at life groups and community outreach groups and sign up for them (but the app simply redirects you to the websites instead of it being an in-app functionality), to donate to the Epic Church, or to read an online version of the bible. There is no contact information in the app, which further confirms my suspicions that the app is only intended for people who are already members of Epic Church. This is a stark contrast to their website, which is heavily designed towards new believers, but the mission I've gathered from their website is strengthened by this app. This is because out of all the things they chose to add into such a minimalistic app they decided to include the Life Groups and volunteering outreach search engines which serve to browse and sign up for these community-strengthening activities. It is then clear that the sense of community I have been speaking of since week 1 (with the Life Groups) is a very important part of Epic Church's identity, so much so that Life Groups and volunteering outreach are included in their fundamentally simple app alongside the bible and the recordings of their religious services.


I believe that, based only on the app, the relationship between the Church and digital media is leaning towards a blending relationship (refer to bottom of this post for the relationships) with a few characteristics from a blurred or bridged relationship. This is because there is an overlap of what a religious service looks like traditionally along with how it can be accessed online and in the app. It would be safe to say that the main point of the app is to have the religious services of the Epic Church in a fast-access, handheld framework, alongside the search engine for community groups. This shows an overlap between religious services with digital technology and a transcendence of these religious services into a digital and asynchronous space showing characteristics of a blending, almost blurring relationship as a new 'space' is created. Yet, aside from the religious services, all other aspects of the app point towards a more blending/bridging relationship. For example, the Life groups and community outreach groups are easily searched in the app, but once you have found and signed up for a group, there is no digital counterpart to the meetings that happen within the groups. Therefore there is a distinct and measurable difference between the Epic Church's Life Groups in the context of being online vs. in the context of being offline, although there is a bridge between them (the app). If we take into context their website, I believe the relationship maintains mostly a blended relationship with digital media. There is, in the context of the religious services, a digital 'space' (and thus a blurred relationship), but in the context of all other content at the Epic Church's website, there is mostly a distinction between online/offline life. This would make sense under my stated profile of the Epic Church, since the support for a tight-knit community that I state comes from examples such as Life Groups and the welcome video which shows coffee talks, and community members personally interacting. These examples show a much more 'bridged' relationship between online and offline life than they do anything else. Yet, one of the most universal religious traditions is worship and time of worship, and in the Epic Church, the context of worship has been formed in a new online/offline 'space' which shows a deeply blurred relationship. Because of this, I would call the Epic Church's relationship with online/offline life a 'blended' relationship. In the end, I can update my experimental assessment of the Epic Church's identity by relating this new analysis to the core observation:

"The apparent mission of the Epic church is centered on drawing in new believers, youth, minorities, and Philadelphians into the faith. They want to pave the way for a tight-knit yet diverse community centered on Jesus' teachings through casual communication and a relaxed atmosphere, one formed by the blending of the very community's offline and online life."