There Is No Holiness but Attentive Holiness
Liberating Our Attention in the Age of Distraction
We live in the Age of Attention.
Not the Information Age. Not even the Digital Age.
Attention has become our greatest commodity.
Our entertainment isn’t free—it’s purchased with time, focus, and our sacred capacity to notice. Advertisers are bidding for our attention so they can sell it to someone else. The result is life in an economy that thrives on distraction.
We pay to be entertained, and then we are sold to those who pay to keep us entertained. Entertainment has become the conduit for captivity.
As historic liberators, what is the role of the Church in this?
What if attention is not something to be spent, but something to be redeemed?
Competing for Holy Attention
For centuries, the Church has called people to prayer, worship, and communion—acts that require presence. But in today’s world, presence is the premium commodity. As I’ve written elsewhere, the competition isn’t the megachurch down the street. It’s Netflix, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and every other platform that profits from your next scroll (or, more likely, doomscroll).
The attention merchants have built digital sanctuaries more magnetic than most Sunday services. Their algorithms are modern-day evangelists, spreading gospels of consumption, comfort, and comparison.
And yet, the Church’s role has never been to out-entertain. It’s to out-purpose.
If the modern economy demands our attention for profit, then the Church must reclaim that same attention for purpose—for holiness, for community, for transformation.
A quote often attributed to John Wesley goes, “There is no holiness but social holiness.” This meant holiness could not be practiced in isolation; it required community.
In the 21st century, I believe the phrase is more true and essential than ever, but it might need a rephrasing for our attention economy:
There is no holiness but attentive holiness.
To follow Christ today requires the discipline of attention—choosing, moment by moment, to be fully present to God, to one another, and to ourselves. Attentive holiness looks like resisting the doomscroll long enough to exist.
It looks like noticing the voice on the other end of a Discord call, not as a username but as a person.
It looks like treating a YouTube comment section as a mission field instead of a war zone.
Our calling as digital ministers isn’t to fight for attention—it’s to redeem it. To transform screens from sites of consumption into sanctuaries of connection.
A Case Study in Liberating Attention
One of the more fascinating discoveries from my time with Checkpoint Church is the strong desire to flee from social media, yet remain in digital spaces.
Those like myself, the digital natives, find that the Internet is the most fulfilling way we’ve ever experienced our true selves, but there is also a severe lack that is being worsened routinely by those in Silicon Valley.
I believe that the Internet has revealed a fantastic gift of neo-monastic community building. From the old chatrooms and RSS feeds of the 00s to the current halls of Discord, we’ve stumbled into the next great awakening of personhood via community, especially with regard to the digital native. However, there has been a usurper — the technologist who is also fervently capitalist. The rapid monetization of each new platform and wave of web-based tech is a clear enough sign, as if the attention economy diatribe above isn’t.
The kicker is this: this isn’t the desire of the digital native.
At Checkpoint, we are wrapping up our second crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. It’s not going very well. The first didn’t either. However, we wanted to see if we could address some of the shortcomings from the first iteration. Instead, what we’ve realized is that our attempt isn’t the problem — the model is broken. And we broke it.
Crowdfunding sites rely on social media to spread and garner funding. The issue is that our Discord-based church has become a more fulfilling place for our community, so they’ve mostly left social media behind.
When I encourage our team to share the links to support us on their Facebook walls or Instagram feeds, most of them confess they don’t even have accounts anymore. Or they deleted the app from their phone.
Attention liberation is not only needed, but it is also clearly desperately desired, and — to be frank — not that hard to achieve. If a group of the chronically online nerds, geeks, and gamers of the world can find a way to escape the attention economy, then surely there is still hope.
The Church Beyond the Scroll
Digital churches, hybrid ministries, even the established churches of old—our task isn’t to mimic the entertainment industry. It’s to reframe it. To remind people that their attention is sacred because they are sacred. When someone stops to listen, even for a moment, that’s a miracle of focus in a distracted world.
That’s holy ground.
Maybe the Church’s next reformation isn’t architectural but attentional. Maybe the pews we’re meant to fill are timelines and livestreams. Maybe the “building” is less about where we gather and more about how we pay attention to each other in digital space.
If so, then every pastor, every content creator, every church communicator has one central mission: To teach people how to attend—faithfully, intentionally, and with love.
When we teach people to pay attention to what truly matters, we teach them to love as Christ loved, fully present, unhurried, and undistracted.
If holiness is social, then attentive holiness is its digital expression.
The Church’s greatest mission today may not be winning back cultural relevance—it may be redeeming the attention of our people from the noise.
Because when we choose to look up from the endless scroll, when we give our attention to something eternal, we find that God has been paying attention to us all along.
World 3-26 Complete
Q: Why did the church install an LED cross?
A: So it could finally get some light engagement.
Where have you found more fulfilling life online? What's a digital experience where you feel the void being filled rather than just doomscrolling?