Five hundred years ago, the printing press made the Protestant Ref­­or­mation possible by spreading new ideas faster and easier.

Today, the internet is multiplying the speed and ease of communication once again.

It’s opened new paths to connect with people. Communities are shifting shapes, and this includes faith communities.

If people can meet spouses online, do their jobs online and complete ­degrees online, they may be ready to find Christ-centered community online.

And if they are ready to find Christ-centered community online, I believe we have a responsibility to provide it.

Online friends are real friends. Community online is real community. Church online is a real and necessary part of the coming reign of God.

The Intention Church is acknowledging this reality.

We’re an online congregation, founded Sept. 8 in partnership with Central District Conference of Mennonite Church USA.

We’re a new kind of Anabaptist com­munity. And not just because we’re taking advantage of technology to provide the connections people seek.

We’re combining the Jesus-focused, Anabaptist, peace-church tradition of the Mennonites with the prophetic tradition of the Black church in America.

Our roots in the Black church make us truth tellers. Our roots in Anabaptism make us peacemakers.

Both traditions make us community builders. 

Since our launch, our online community has been gathering by Zoom to pray, reflect on scripture and the narrow way of Jesus and enjoy fellowship. We also connect during the week through our Facebook group and Discord server.

If we are to make disciples by teaching them the commands of Jesus Christ — the law of love — then we must go where the people are.

We believe God can put on flesh, even if that embodiment looks different from what we typically imagine. That’s what The Intention Church is all about.

How did The Intention Church come to be?

During the pandemic, a lot of us had to adjust to new technologies. My kids spent all of one school year and part of another learning online.

And, from where I sit, we learned a lot about the church’s failure to treat online communities as real and necessary.

Shortly after things started shutting down, a series of high-profile police and vigilante killings caught our national attention in the U.S. The murders of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbury and the killing of Breonna Taylor were inescapable. We couldn’t look away.

Lots of people were confronted with uncomfortable truths about race — truths we’d previously been able to ignore. Some White people realized they had no meaningful relationships with anyone who didn’t look like them or experience life as they did. The internet seemed like a way to close that gap.

That’s when I found myself on the radar of White Christians for the first time.

And it was uncomfortable.

I do not enjoy every kind of attention. But I recognized something relatively quickly.

Not everyone was looking for a new Black friend to hide behind in debates about a bunch of stuff the Black friend didn’t ask to get thrown around in.

A lot of people were simply looking for belonging.

The pandemic — and the increased time online and the national grieving — exposed the isolation, even loneliness, many people felt.

I found more people reaching out with questions about justice, history, race, faith and God. I found more people from around the country, even around the world, viewing me as something only a few people had before: their pastor.

I took these relationships seriously. To complete my seminary studies, I turned in a project on how digital communities were reshaping society and how the church needed to take that seriously.

Three years later, we’ve launched The Intention Church.

We are not here to replace in-person worship services.

But connecting with people? Forming meaningful relationships? Studying the Bible? Being transformed by the narrow way of Jesus? Becoming ambassadors of peace? Learning to love better? Taking care of the least of these? We can do all of that.

We’re providing structure to a com­munity that happened organically — a community committed to safety, belonging and Jesus Christ — like the first Anabaptists did 500 years ago.

In addition to serving as a pastor in The Intention Church, Trey Ferguson is executive pastor of the Refuge Church in Homestead, Fla., where he lives with his wife, Jessica, and their three children. He has a master of divinity degree from the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology at Virginia Union University.