THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY

BY THE EDITOR

THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY

Information asymmetry in the post-lockdown church

Life after lockdown is a joyous prospect. But the pandemic leaves an array of challenges in its wake. The enforced atomisation of our Christian communities and the remote worship of the COVID era has created a particular pastoral issue for our ministers and elders. We have each run the race at a different pace.

ASYMMETRY

The impact of ‘asymmetric information’ on markets was first studied by George Akerlof in the 1970s. He noticed that buyers of used cars didn’t know enough to figure out if they were looking at a good or a bad vehicle. The lack of information meant they wouldn’t risk paying a high price in case the car was faulty. But sellers who knew they had a quality car on their hands refused to sell at a lower price. The end result is that no highgrade cars were traded at all. Akerlof’s insight was that unequal access to knowledge can cause problems for everyone.

A year of homeschooling has left behind a different kind of asymmetric information problem for the education system. While some young people have managed to keep learning, others need to catch up. We can observe that online lessons have worked for some pupils. But they are ideal for very few, and detrimental to the learning of others. A similar problem is facing the church.

As churches begin to reopen after a year and more of remote services, people will return having had hugely different levels of spiritual, theological nourishment. Many will have been able to virtually attend two services and a midweek meeting at their church. Some will have attended less frequently than usual, the result of a variety of circumstances. Some with limited or no access to technology will have been dependent on others delivering recordings of services to them. Others have used online access and ‘church from home’ to hear a vastly increased number of sermons. Of course, there has always been a range of knowledge within each community of believers. Everyone is at a different stage of their walk with God (1 Corinthians 3). Even under normal circumstances, people’s unique interests For those who take the opportunity and abilities — bestowed by our Creator and nurtured by the Spirit — bring different to devour the information that is approaches to personal devotion and now available to them, there are Bible study. There is liberty here — and no requirement to attain enlightenment. We risks as well as benefits. trust, too, that God, who sent manna from heaven and who made water spring from a rock, provides for our spiritual needs. But that reality is no cause for complacency. It must not be allowed to mask the fact that there is a growing theological information asymmetry in the church today.

INFORMATION AGE

This knowledge inequality is brought into sharp focus by remote worship. But it has existed long before COVID. Pre-pandemic, we were used to a regular diet of worship, preaching and fellowship. When the minister stood up to preach, he knew what the congregation had heard a week previously. Yet, he could not know...