Their explicit 'vision' statement is to see every person in the city make Jesus the forgiver and leader of their life. Throughout my research I built, in a step-by-step fashion, the following statement about their religious identity and mission:
"The apparent mission of the Epic church is centered on drawing in youth, minorities, and Philadelphians into the faith. Their identity displays a desire to pave the way for a tight-knit yet diverse community centered on Jesus' teachings through the means of casual communication, and a relaxed and comfortable atmosphere."
There are examples for each claim made within the statement above, but the best and most complete examples I have found are:
1. THE LIFE GROUPS:
The strong sense of community comes from under their "Get Involved" section. Under this there are groups for youth and kids, showing the Epic Church is very present in engaging with younger generations. There are also community volunteering groups. Even more interesting were their 'Life Groups'. These life groups are very interesting due to their nature there are life groups for everything from talking about motherhood to watching and discussing Football together:
2. SERVICE SERIES' POP CULTURE REFERENCES IN NAMES AND ARTWORKS:
As shown in the first blog post, and will be shown below. The Epic Church does something peculiar with how they present their religious services. An important thing to note about these visuals is that they are designed to be a play on popular culture. Some of them even contain direct references, like emojis. Even more, the titles of some of these recordings are direct references to popular online phenomena such as hashtags, phrases, and even memes. To prove this, some of them are shown below. This shows the Epic Church's attempt to be in touch with popular culture as part of engaging themselves and others on their religious identity of casual communication and a relaxed atmosphere.
In the end, the Epic Church relationship with the media can better be understood when the simplicity and focus group of their app is analyzed. Epic Church sees and approaches media most widely through a 'blending' relationship (refer to class notes), although there are also bridging and blurring aspects to their media usage. This is because certain aspects, such as their services and the bible, are accessible online through their website or app. This creates a new 'space' for worship within the Epic Church. Yet, the church maintains a clear distinction between online and offline life for other things such as the Life Groups mentioned above: you can sign up for them, but you can't meet online (they meet in person). This clear distinction is even more visible from their app, geared specifically towards members and which maintains a careful simplicity to only show the necessary while still maintaining their sleek distinctive style.
I believe the Epic Church sees media as a tool to seem more 'inviting' to Philadelphians, the youth, and non-believers. They also see it as a tool to share their services and have more people access their teachings, which in unintentional consequence creates a blended 'space' of worship online.
QUESTIONS:
Do you think Epic is creating more than just a blended space within their media usage? Or does this assessment seem correct?
Does the contrast between a very 'cool-looking', sleek web/app design and a church that isn't entirely blurring the lines between online and offline (with things such as interactive social media) seem unusual to you? Or do you think churches can and should integrate both seamlessly?
What would you say about multisite churches as a whole, do you think the general trend is that the nature of having different campuses leads to churches with a closer relationship to digital media?
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