Technological progress has always shaped society and today is no different. It infuses everything, everywhere (even in the depths of the Amazon rainforest).
It affects the things we see and recognise and use. And it affects the unseen influences that shape our day to day lives without our realising it. As a Christian, thinking about the relationship between technology, digital practice and my faith has added an extra layer to my work helping the public sector do good things with digital.
Genesis 1:27 tells us everyone is made “in the image of God” and I see that spark of the divine reflected in how everybody explores their love for the world and those around them. When I had the opportunity to join GDS I had no idea that I would find Kingdom values and Gospel practice cropping up in user-centred design and the government design principles but I believe they do. I’ve contributed some of my thoughts on “Faith in Technology” in an interview with my one-time colleague Richard Sargeant for his podcast Faith in Action. For a time I was part of an advisory group to the Church of England on their digital work. And I got involved with Kingdom Code at its outset in order to meet other Christians in the world of tech (the 2024 hackathon is coming in October).
And yet somehow I had missed the existence of FaithTech and the work they’re doing to create a global network of Christians in tech.
They recently partnered with Kingdom Code to host an evening exploring whether there would be appetite for adding a London chapter to the other FaithTech communities around the world. It was really encouraging.
A different approach to building technology
At the end of the evening I picked up a copy of the FaithTech Playbook. The Playbook offers a guide for Christians in tech, proposing a redemptive approach to building and using technology.
The FaithTech Playbook puts forward a Jesus-centered approach to technology that I hadn’t heard before. It’s a design and development methodology that embeds biblical beliefs and values into the product design and development cycle, seeking for products to align with God’s vision for the world. It’s a model for building technology that not only changes the world through building good product but transforming those who build it while they do.
And at its heart is the idea of Redemptive Technology:
- being redemptive
- building redemptively
- practising redemptive technology.
Being Redemptive
We’re all familiar with the cry of “Move Fast and Break Things” as a disruptive force in challenging the status quo and stimulating great innovation. We’re also all too familiar with its pitfalls. Calling this approach Reckless Technology, the playbook suggests that there is something ultimately irresponsible about a philosophy that can prioritise speed and self-interest at the cost of others. The fallout can be devastating – privacy breaches, exploitation, damage to trust, products that harm rather than help. FaithTech argue this is an outworking of tech as living for self.
The pushback has been led by an appeal to “Slow Down and Fix Things”. This Responsible Technology approach is deliberate in thinking about the ethics, values, consequences and negative consequences of technology. As a guiding philosophy it embeds the belief of living for justice. This model puts inclusion and equality at the heart of its practice and seeks the use of tech to promote social justice and advance human flourishing.
There’s nothing bad about Responsible Technology and it represents an upgrade over Reckless Technology but the FaithTech playbook encourages us to think more deeply about what the Gospel of Jesus Christ means for the way in which Christians involved with technology think about their work.
And that’s where we come to Redemptive Technology. It’s taking good, responsible values and adding the transformational love of God. Adding the Gospel to Responsible Technology resets our expectations about what it is to create, rooting practice in the idea of sacrifice and a dependence on the Holy Spirit. It contrasts with the Reckless model of living for self, and the Responsible model of living for justice, with the biblical principle of living by the Spirit.
Redemptive Technology makes its objective the pursuit of blessing people and a slogan of “Sacrifice, Create Things”. As the Playbook says “I sacrifice, you win. I give of myself for your gain. It comes from a deep place of generosity”. At its heart is the perspective that all people are image bearers of God and that our primary purpose as Christians is to sacrificially love users more than any product.
Building Redemptive Technology
The Playbook takes this abstract idea and explores what it means to put those Beliefs, Values and Tools into action.
The belief of Living by the Spirit is summed up as giving up power and control, relying on the Spirit to guide our thoughts; and receiving our identity and freedom.
The values of People as Image-Bearers speaks to our Identity and our Responsibility as people who believe that when God created people, he did so in His own image.
And finally, the tools are approached and designed in such a way that they advance love as their purpose.
Practising Redemptive Technology
The third part of the Playbook explores what it means to put all of this together into a framework for software development. The four steps won’t be new to anyone who has ever built good products and services but applying core Christian beliefs to the process is an encouragement and a blessing.
The four-step framework is: Discover, Discern, Develop, and Demonstrate.
Discover
We reorient ourselves to see, through the lens of Christ, those most affected by the problem. We position ourselves humbly through a practice of lament. Through this process, we feel the pain the problem is causing, present it to Jesus, and invite the Holy Spirit to actively help us understand and respond to the problem
FaithTech Playbook p40
Discovery always begins with the importance of understanding the user need. But the FaithTech model takes that familiar practice and roots the response in a prayerful consideration of the problem and those it affects.
Discern
We involve the wisdom of God, testing and refining our approach continually. We recognize that true discernment often comes from beyond our own frames of reference, and we seek to uncover and understand the will of God
FaithTech Playbook p44
The second step is all about responding to the need in the best way. That’s always been the intent of the Alpha stage (this Alpha, not that Alpha) – take what you’ve learnt in Discovery and prototype some ideas of what might work well and figure out what is worth spending the energy and effort on building out as a beta.
The FaithTech framework encourages us to think about it as a period of discernment, an explicit moment to pause and seek God’s steer in considering what to do next.
This may be to:
- reject the need to build technology at all – technology isn’t always the solution after all.
- receive and embrace an existing solution and curate rather than create.
- reimagine an existing intervention and adapt it in line with a redemptive approach.
- create but cautiously and with an invitation to the Holy Spirit to help us design protections against misuse and guard against building anything that may unintentionally exploit those we seek to serve.
Develop
In coming to a build decision, we have set our course. But we recognize that God establishes our steps to develop the solution. The outworking of these steps therefore comes through the active involvement of the Holy Spirit to reveal what is in God’s imagination, so that we can co-create with him in making new things visible. Therefore we do not simply develop but rather co-develop with the Holy Spirit.
FAITHTECH PLAYBOOK P46
Iteration is one of the most celebrated aspects of the Agile methodology. Co-creation with users is amongst the most aspirational in building the right thing, and doing it well.
The FaithTech playbook doesn’t intend to replace any of the good substance at the heart of user-centred design but takes the ideas and again adds a further Gospel perspective on what Co-Creation could mean for Christians:
- Request (invite the Holy Spirit into the process)
- Receive (wait on the Lord to hear from him)
- Review (bring these ideas together)
- Render (build what this points towards)
- Rejoice (thank God in the outworking of these ideas).
And repeat as necessary
Demonstrate
We redefine impact from the greatest amount of force in the shortest amount of time to friendship compounded by time. Using this new equation, we measure and demonstrate our impact redemptively.
FAITHTECH PLAYBOOK P49
No framework for developing software would be complete without a way of measuring impact and understanding whether or not what you’ve built is actually making a difference to the problem that inspired you to action in the first place.
But what do Objectives and Key Results and performance metrics mean in the context of a Gospel perspective on software? For the FaithTech community, the impact of redemptive technology is Redemptive Impact and begins with friendship.
So the impact of FaithTech projects is measured by how it redefines the community; both the users with needs and those building the responses to that. I really like how they frame this in the lasting nature of any relationship and a focus on building sustainable solutions rather than quick fixes that ultimately leave users indebted or alone.
What about FaithTech in London?
The Playbook encourages reflection on living by the Spirit while creating technology, viewing people as image-bearers, and building products that foster deeper love for God and others. It contains a lot of really great stuff – download a copy and check out more of the detail for yourselves. The Playbook is something you can read by yourself and in isolation but, like studying the Bible without belonging to a church, these ideas come alive in communities and teams dedicated to putting faith into action.
So, what does this mean for we Christian technologists in London?
Of course, it means that our faith can inform and inspire the work we do on a day to day basis. During the event we were asked to think about what a Jesus revival in the use of technology would mean. Paradoxically I think it would probably mean technology playing a far less prominent role in society. Instead we might see technology put in service of human interaction and enabling stronger, more engaged communities in the real, geographic world. Technology that builds up from the heart of God would be technology that is designed to bring people together in meaningful ways, fostering deep connections and promoting genuine human flourishing.
It also means building out that community. And FaithTech is seeking to be a mechanism for organising Christian technologists around the world to harness our skills and capabilities for the Gospel. In this way it shares its heart with Kingdom Code. The difference seems to be that it has gathered some momentum to connect both local communities in places and our brothers and sisters globally.
That’s a fantastic ambition but I was left wondering whether the place to start is more tightly scoped and whether the Minimum Viable Product here is an even more local level.
Despite all the things that the Internet does to bring us together, the ease and simplicity of more accidental community feels like an important part of making a real impact. While we were praying I had a picture of the city covered in the ‘fog of war’ (as you’d get in Civilisation and games like that). That fog was clearing as each borough lit up. So, I wonder whether the place to start is not with a London chapter but in seeing how many of the 33 boroughs could support their own?
From these smaller, local gatherings, deeper discipleship, friendship, and flourishing can grow. It’s much easier for a handful of people to be purposefully in contact in Croydon than to convene many people in central London. So I wonder if starting with the boroughs is the MVP for a strong, connected community in a city of 9 million? A Minimum Viable Community if you like.
I’d certainly be up for helping establish one for Croydon and prayerfully looking forward to seeing what might come of the partnership between Kingdom Code and FaithTech in the future.