Date

12-7-2023

Department

Rawlings School of Divinity

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Chair

Steve Lowe

Keywords

digital discipleship, phygital church planting, effectiveness, grounded theory

Disciplines

Christianity | Religion

Abstract

The purpose of this grounded theory study was to investigate digital discipleship methods and their effectiveness in the phygital (physical + digital) church within various US- based evangelical networks. Throughout this research, a grounded theory study was generally defined as one “in which a researcher derives a general, abstract theory of a process, action, or interaction grounded in the views of participants” (Creswell & Creswell, 2017, p.13). Furthermore, the phygital church was defined as a group of 10-100 people who “utilize the strengths of physical church and the strengths of digital church” (Stadia Church Planting, 2020, p. 4) to gather for the purposes found in Acts 2:41-47 (ESV, 2016). Whereas effectiveness was generally defined as “multiplying and sending [disciples], not [simply] gathering and counting” them (Ferguson et al., 2018). Faithful effectiveness and multiplication by today’s church ensures obedient fulfillment of Jesus’ commands in Matthew 28:19-20 (ESV, 2016) (Etzel, 2017). Nonetheless, through a robust collection and committed analysis of qualitative data, this researcher attempted to gain critical insights from digital church leaders; thus, generating a new model and best practice methods for digital discipleship and effectiveness in phygital church networks.

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