Jeff, a servant of Jesus Christ, to the digital missionaries scattered across every time zone: the ones leading groups at midnight, answering prayer requests from strangers, pastoring people you have never stood in a room with. Grace and peace be yours in abundance.
Church, I have a confession.
Earlier this year I spent about a month in hospitals. Heart surgery in January, then a day in March when I couldn’t breathe, got in my car, and let it drive me to the emergency room. Somewhere in that stretch I had a thought I’m not proud of: if we shut down theChurch.digital, would anybody even notice? For a while I honestly believed the answer was no.
I said that out loud on the stream when I came back, and I’ll say it again here, because I know some of you have asked the same question about your own ministry. If I stopped, would anyone notice? You lead people you can’t see. You preach into a camera, moderate a chat, answer a message at 2am from someone in a country you’ve never visited. Then you close the laptop and the room is quiet.
The answers started coming back yes. And they came from people like you.
So this fall, I’m inviting all of TCD to read one letter together. 1 Peter. Why? It was written to people in exactly your situation.
A letter for people who aren’t where the center is
Peter opens like this:
“Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To the elect who are exiles of the Dispersion throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, chosen” (1 Peter 1:1)
Five provinces spread across what is now Turkey. Small house churches, miles apart, most of them never meeting each other. Peter can’t visit them all, so he writes. The letter goes out “through Silvanus” (5:12) and is read aloud from room to room, by believers who never shared a building.
Look at what he calls them in the very first sentence. Exiles. Scattered. Chosen. All three at once. He never says, “come back to Jerusalem and then you’ll be the real thing.” He doesn’t treat distance as a lesser version of the church. He tells them who they already are, right where they are.
That’s the first thing I want every digital missionary to hear. You are not a satellite of the “real” ministry. You are not waiting to be validated by a building. Peter calls the scattered ones chosen, and he never takes it back.
Exiles, without a home base
“Beloved, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles…” (2:11)
Many of you know this one in your bones. No staff meeting down the hall. No building to walk into on a bad day. Some of you serve a church on one continent from a bedroom on another. Some of you are the only person in your whole city doing what you do.
Peter doesn’t fix that by moving everybody to one place. He equips them to live faithfully as exiles: to keep their conduct honorable, to keep loving each other, to keep hoping. The goal isn’t to get you out of the field. It’s to strengthen you in the field.
Dismissed as not real
“Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial that has come upon you, as though something strange were happening to you.” (4:12)
Peter’s readers were slandered and misunderstood. Ours is a much smaller trial, and I want to be careful here, because some of our friends in India could be jailed for sharing Jesus. That is suffering in the sense Peter means.
But many of you carry a quieter weight. You hear that what you do “isn’t real church.” Since COVID, plenty of churches have pulled back from digital, and the people who stayed on the front lines feel it. Some of you work in online spaces far more toxic than any lobby on a Sunday morning. And I’ll be honest: there have been stretches of my own ministry in digital spaces where I was not okay emotionally or spiritually.
Peter says don’t be surprised, and don’t be ashamed. And then he says something every scattered servant needs:
“…your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering.” (5:9)
Living stones, no building
“you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood…” (2:5)
His readers had no temple and no cathedral. Peter didn’t give them a building. He told them they were the building. Every one of them is a priest.
This is the heart of discipleship on the digital edge, and it’s not about watching a broadcast from your couch. It’s about the church being built out of people wherever those people are: in a Discord server, a WhatsApp group, a Twitch chat, a virtual world. You aren’t watching the house being built. You’re one of the living stones it’s built from.
Belonging without proximity
In March I was lying in a hospital bed, alone. In those moments I had no belonging. I missed it. I had forgotten it. I lost sight of God, and of the community of people surrounding me digitally.
Maybe you’ve been there too. Not in a hospital, but at the end of a long night of ministry, with the chat closed and nobody in the room. It’s easy to believe that belonging only happens where bodies are.
Peter’s readers had every reason to believe that. They were scattered across five provinces, cut off from Jerusalem, many of them rejected by the neighbors right next door. And Peter tells them:
“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession…” (2:9)
“Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God…” (2:10)
A people. Not a crowd in one place: a people spread across a map. And at the very end of the letter, he passes on a greeting from hundreds of miles away:
“The church in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends you greetings…” (5:13)
Chosen together with you. A church they had never seen claims them as its own. 1 Peter is testimony that belonging and proximity don’t have to be connected. You belong to God’s people before you’re ever in the room, and even if you never are. The people around you digitally are not a substitute for the church. They are the church, and you belong with them.
Shepherding people you’ve never met
“Be shepherds of God’s flock that is among you, watching over them not out of compulsion, but willingly…” (5:2)
Peter writes as “a fellow elder” (5:1). He’s shepherding by letter, caring for people he may never see in person. So are you. You know someone’s prayer requests before you know their face. You’ve walked people through grief by text. And Peter’s word to you is willingly and eagerly, as an example and not as a lord, because the Chief Shepherd will appear, and His crown “will never fade away” (5:4).
And when it feels like nobody sees it:
“Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and rejoice…” (1:8)
The whole church has always loved Someone it can’t see. Caring for someone’s soul through a screen is not a lesser kind of love.
Hope while you wait
“By His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1:3)
When I was asking whether anyone would notice, I was measuring the wrong things. I was defining success myself instead of letting God define it. Peter points scattered people to a hope that doesn’t depend on the numbers, a faith “more precious than gold” that is being proven “by fire” (1:7). Some of you have walked away from vocational ministry under the weight of all this. Some of you are close. This letter is for you too.
Scattered. Not alone.
So here’s what we’re doing. It’s called Scattered: one study through 1 Peter for the whole digital church, on every continent, at your own pace.
Scattered, because that’s who we are. Peter’s readers were spread across five provinces and were still one people. So are we. Distance doesn’t make you less the church.
Not alone, because every morning, people on every continent will be reading the same passage. Someone in Lagos, someone in Manila, someone in Kansas City, the same words on the same day.
And not alone because you’re needed. Peter says it plainly:
“As good stewards of the manifold grace of God, each of you should use whatever gift he has received to serve one another.” (4:10)
Your gift is for the rest of us. That’s not a slogan. It’s how the scattered church has always held together.
Here’s how it works. Sign up, and starting Monday, October 19, a short devotional through 1 Peter arrives each morning, Monday to Saturday, by email, or by DM on Discord if you’d rather. It comes early in the morning in your own time zone, and you can pick the time that works. The HEAR Journal opens the same day, so you can write down what God is showing you as you go.
Sign up for Scattered: https://thechurch.digital/scattered/signup/
Rather read it on your phone? Starting October 19, send the word READ to Cairn on WhatsApp at +1 510-824-8724 (https://wa.me/15108248724?text=READ), and the day’s devotional comes right back. If your church or ministry team uses Slack, whoever can add apps to your workspace can install Cairn at https://thechurch.digital/slack/. Pick a channel, and starting October 19 the devotional posts there Monday to Saturday at 7am Eastern. Messenger and Instagram are next, as soon as Meta approves our app.
You don’t have to move anywhere to do this. You don’t have to be anywhere on Tuesday night. Wherever you open it, you won’t be reading alone.
Peace to all of you who are in Christ.
Steadfast in Christ, Jeff
