D-Church: What God is Doing Next?

The “D” stands for the four key distinctives of D-church:

Discipleship as the goal, rather than mere membership or conversion.
Design thinking (as in the Stanford d.school), implying continuous, iterative improvement in our systems for making disciples.
Decentralized systems (like git or the blockchain), rather than centralized hierarchies as in most modern churches and mission organizations.
Digital spaces as full partners with physical space, rather than substitutes or supplements.

The term also represents our efforts to “de-church” American cultural Christianity — which might be better called “Churchianity” as its public face is pastors and buildings rather than lives transformed by the gospel.

To be clear, I do love the church: both the abstract concept, as well our local, regional, and denominational instances of that concept. And I believe Jesus does too. I am deeply grateful for my current and former churches, and those who serve in them as faithfully as they know how.

But I strive to love the church the way Jesus does, presenting it holy and blameless unto Him. And to do that, I believe we need to become less full of ourselves and more full of Him.

The future of [Zoom] meetings (podcast)

Dr. Ernie Prabhakar