Tay Moss

Not a Class, but a Conversation: The Power of Networks on CHURCHx

When most people think of online education, they picture either a webinar or structured courses; a Zoom session to attend, a presentation, some breakout groups, start and end dates, maybe a quiz or two. Or perhaps they think of an interactive video they watch and click through.   

Fun story: as a teenager, I worked at McDonald’s, and as part of my training for that job I had to do an “Asynchronous Learning Exercise.”  My manager took me to the break room, gave me a kiddie-cup of soda, put a VHS tape into a VCR (remember those?), and asked me to watch a video while he had smoke next to the trash compactor out back. 

The video was about 30 minutes long. It explained, in excruciating and self-justifying detail, that the purpose of this video was to resolve the number one complaint of McDonald’s customers: “The fries aren’t salty enough.” Therefore, McDonald’s Corporate had commissioned a study and invented a new “salt-dispersion device” (a fancy saltshaker), which, of course, required a training video. The whole thing boiled down to the “Triple Arching Method ™” in which you shake the saltshaker—the “salt-dispersion device”—three times over each basket of fries you dump into the cooling table.  

This early exercise in learning with video did not, to my young self, seem particularly efficient. I now see that it was an example of what we might call a “content-first” approach, in which all the work has gone towards pushing the content into the brains of the learners without regard for what they already know, how they might best learn, or what change was actually important beyond simply recalling the specific content required.   

In truth, the outcome, “employee will know the ‘Triple Arching Method ™” is not a very good one, from a learning design point of view. Much better would be, “employee will value salting the French fries in order to achieve maximum customer satisfaction.” Such a value is not derived from watching slow-motion, grainy (this was the 90’s) video of a hand repeating the same gesture over and over.  Perhaps, instead of taking a smoke break, my manager should have simply served me two sets of fries—salted and unsalted—and let me learn with my mouth instead of my ears. 

I tell this story to demonstrate how good learning design requires us to think about the learner’s circumstance and experience of instruction, not the facts we want them to absorb and repeat. 

A good example of that on CHURCH is the innovation of creating learning “Networks.” 

Take the Church Treasurer’s Webinar Series, for example. Or the Trauma-Informed Pastoral Support Network. Or our new favourite, the Prophets, Priests, and Prompt Engineers. These aren’t “courses” in the traditional sense. There’s no final exam, no pre-set lesson plan. Instead, they’re gatherings—communities of learners and leaders coming together around a shared concern or curiosity. 

And what makes them work isn’t content—it’s connection. 

The Freedom to Follow Your Questions 

Traditional learning often starts with content first: here’s the material, now sit down and absorb it. There’s a place for that, of course. But when the topic is complex, evolving, or deeply personal—like trauma-informed care or artificial intelligence in ministry—that approach can quickly feel too rigid. 

Networks flip that model on its head. Instead of content first, we start with community. We say: “Let’s gather the people who care about this. Let’s give them tools to organize, space to meet, and a platform to archive their learnings.” 

Then we let the learning unfold. 

As I’ve said before, our primary model of learning on CHURCHx is Social Constructivism—the insight that learning is an inherently social activity. And one implication of this paradigm is that healthy learning communities will produce new knowledge as an artifact of their work. One of the things I’m spending a lot of time thinking about is how to take that emergent knowledge and spread it beyond its parent network. I could say a lot more about my ideas of how this can be done—but for now, just suffice it to say that knowledge is a very powerful thing, and that it wants to be free. 

A Platform for Ongoing Discovery 

The Networks on CHURCHx use our platform to share resources, organize Zoom calls, post recordings, and capture the wisdom that emerges from their conversations. But there’s no set path. No “you must do this before you do that.” It’s more like a library crossed with a support group—open-ended, participatory, and adaptive. 

And that’s the key: adaptability. The world is changing fast. Church finances, pastoral care, artificial intelligence—these are all moving targets. Networks give us the freedom to learn as we go, adjusting to new information, new needs, and new people who join along the way. 

Not Just Learning—Belonging 

In many ways, the deepest value of Networks isn’t what you learn, but who you learn with. When you show up month after month to talk about real issues with people who share your questions, something powerful happens. Trust builds. Ideas flow. Ministry gets a little less lonely. 

So, if you’re tired of trying to figure it all out on your own—or if you’re just curious about something new—come check out the Networks on CHURCHx. Whether you’re a numbers person, a pastor dealing with hard realities, or a church leader wondering what AI means for the Body of Christ, there’s a place for you here. 

Not a class. A conversation. And maybe even a community.