Attention as a Sacred Act

When nineteen innovators from across the country became Wesleyan Impact Partners’ Phygital Preaching Fellows in 2024, they set out to explore how the Gospel might take new form at the intersection of the physical and digital. Supported by Lilly Endowment’s Compelling Preaching Initiative, these fellows are experimenting with new technologies and delivery systems that help the church meet people where they are — online and in person — with messages of hope, love, and transformation.

Recently, the fellows traveled to Boston for a learning journey centered on “Technologies of Liberation.” Among their stops was the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground at Boston University, where they engaged with the legacy of theologian and mystic Howard Thurman — not as a man who turned away from the world, but one who turned deeply toward it.

Thurman’s mysticism was rooted in attentiveness: a spiritual practice of noticing the movement of God within and around us. Though he lived decades before smartphones and livestreams, Thurman was no stranger to technology. He recorded lectures, hosted a radio show, and used every available medium to translate spiritual truth into accessible, contemporary formats.

One scholar at the Howard Thurman Center offered this reminder: “Just when you think you’ve learned something about God — and especially once you’ve written it down — you must look up. Because God has moved.”

The fellows left Boston wondering: If God is always current — always already at work in the digital as well as the physical — then how might we catch up?

As Thurman taught, attention itself becomes a sacred act. In ministry, preaching, and daily life, perhaps our use of technology isn’t about dragging God into new spaces — but recognizing that God is already there, waiting for us to notice.