The first thing Peter does in his letter, before a single instruction, is tell people pushed out to the edges of the map that God chose them. That matters for anyone doing ministry through a screen, because most of us carry a quiet suspicion that faith at a distance is a lesser copy of the real thing. Run the HEAR method on 1 Peter 1:1-2 and that suspicion has to answer to the text.
We’ve now walked all four letters… Highlight, Explain, Apply and Respond. This week I want to put them back together on two short verses, because these two verses are where the whole letter starts. They’re also where a lot of digital missionaries quietly get stuck.
Is faith online really second best?
Nobody says it out loud. Nobody has to.
You hear it in “the real church.” You hear it in “once you can make it in person.” You see it on staff charts, where the online campus usually sits near the bottom with half a person attached to it. Somewhere along the way, a lot of people who met Jesus through a phone picked up the message that they’re sitting in the waiting room.
I’ll own my part. I’ve caught myself calling the building “church” and the stream “the online thing” in the same breath, as if one counted and the other was overflow seating. I’ve spent years arguing that digital ministry is real ministry… and I still slip into the language that says it isn’t. Some of the words I’m pushing against, I helped build.
Church, the people on the other side of that stream hear every one of those words.
And they draw conclusions. If I’m the overflow, does my prayer count as much? If I’ve never been in the building, am I actually in? Is the person who leads a Bible study in a group chat doing ministry, or just being online? Those questions don’t get asked out loud either. They just sit there, and people slowly drift toward the edge they think they belong on.
What does Peter say before he says anything else?
Look at who the letter is addressed to. Peter writes to believers spread across five Roman provinces… Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia. A long way from Jerusalem. A long way from Peter. He calls them exiles of the Dispersion, people living as outsiders in places that were never going to feel like home.
And before he names one trial, before he gives one command, he calls them chosen.
Then verse 2 says how:
“according to the foreknowledge of God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by His blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance.” 1 Peter 1:2 (BSB).
Read that as someone who has only ever known church through a screen. The Father knew them. The Spirit set them apart. The Son’s blood covered them. None of it was waiting on them to move closer to the centre.
Peter spends two whole verses on who they are before he asks them for anything.
What happens when you run all four steps on two verses?
Try it on paper. Robby and Kandi Gallaty built HEAR as a journaling method, so the writing is the point. It takes about fifteen minutes, and it’s a good way to see the method as one movement after a month of taking it apart.
Start with Highlight. Write out the line that stopped you, with the reference, and give it a title you’ll recognise next year. Mine was the opening of verse 2, and I titled it “Chosen at a distance.”
Then Explain. Who was this first written to? Scattered communities, mostly without standing, living among neighbours who didn’t understand them, far from the apostles. Why would the Holy Spirit put this at the very top of the letter? I think it’s because Peter is about to ask a lot of them, and he won’t do it until they know whose they are. The order is the point.
Apply asks what this teaches me about God and what it would look like in my life. About God… He chooses people at the edges and doesn’t wait for them to come to the middle first. About me… I can stop treating the faith of people I’ve only met online as provisional. This week that might mean texting someone from a livestream chat by name, the same way I’d follow up with someone I met in a lobby.
Respond is the written prayer. Mine was three lines. Thank You for choosing people I’d have filed under “online.” Forgive me for the times I treated them like a second congregation. Help me speak to them this week like they’re family, because they are.
That’s it. Four short entries. It’s not a sermon, and it doesn’t need to be.
Doesn’t this just excuse people from ever gathering?
Fair push. I hear it from pastors I respect. Isn’t “you’re not lesser” one step from “you don’t need anyone”? Doesn’t Peter care about community? Won’t this make it easier for people to stay home forever with a stream and a coffee?
Read the rest of the letter, though. Peter never tells these believers that distance doesn’t matter. He tells them how to be a people across it. A few chapters later he’s talking about loving one another deeply, showing hospitality, using every gift to serve each other. He builds them into a household, and he does it by letter, from far away.
Being told you’re not lesser was never meant to send anyone off alone. You belong to a people, and that people includes folks you’ll only ever meet through a screen. Being chosen at a distance is what makes community at a distance worth building.
What should a pastor do with this?
Pastor, start by listening to how your church talks.
Pull up your last month of announcements, emails and stage welcomes. How often do they speak to the people watching online as guests, or as the ones who’ll come properly someday? How often do they speak to them as the church? You don’t need a consultant for this. You need an afternoon and some honesty.
Then do what Peter does. Open with identity before you ask for anything. The next time you welcome people online, name them as part of the family before you mention a next step, a form or a giving link. It sounds small. To someone who has been quietly wondering whether they count, it isn’t small at all.
And if you have digital missionaries in your church, people already leading groups and prayer threads through their phones, tell them plainly that what they’re doing is ministry. The longer case for forming people when nobody is in the room is in the guide on digital discipleship for churches, and if you’re not sure what to call those people yet, start with what a digital missionary is. The big picture of HEAR itself lives in the overview.
Try it this week
Read 1 Peter 1:1-2 slowly, twice. Then write all four letters on one page: the line that stopped you with its title, who it was written to and why it comes first, what it shows you about God and what it would look like this week, and a short prayer in your own words.
Keep the Respond short. Three lines is plenty.
Who in your feed has been living like a guest in their own faith? Send them these two verses this week, and tell them what you wrote.
Part of the HEAR series. Start with the overview.
We read 1 Peter 2:11-25 together on Scattered this Tuesday, November 3, at 5pm ET on Twitch, where Peter calls the same people foreigners and exiles again and talks about how they live with everyone watching. If you’d like something to carry you between sessions, the daily devotional is running now, and you can sign up here.
