(Or, Grace, Technology, and the Perils of the Forgotten Login)
It started, as these things so often do, with a simple task. Someone — possibly me — was meant to update the parish website. A few clicks, a cheerful cup of coffee, and the words “Welcome to St. Swithun’s” would once again greet the world in the proper liturgical colour of the season. But then came the dreaded login screen.
I typed in the username. Wrong. Tried again. Wrong. Tried the password I use for everything. Still wrong. Then, with growing despair, I did what every honest cleric has done since the dawn of digital ministry — I clicked “Forgot Password.”
What followed was not so much a technological process as a spiritual journey.
First came Confession: I admitted I’d written the password “somewhere safe,” which turned out to mean “in a notebook last seen during the reign of the previous rector.” Then came Penance: I dutifully answered three security questions, none of which I could recall ever writing. (I maintain that I have never had a childhood pet named “Gideon the Fish.”)
Then came Silence: the spinning wheel of eternal waiting. And finally, Absolution — an email that said, “Your password has been reset.” Except, of course, it was sent to the wrong account.
At that moment, I realized: the Church that forgets its password is not just a tech problem — it’s a parable.
The truth is, sometimes we really do forget our passwords. Not just the digital ones, but the spiritual ones too — the words, practices, and rhythms that once gave us access to grace. Prayer becomes something we mean to get back to. Worship feels distant. The language of faith starts to sound like something we used to speak fluently.
When that happens, we can be tempted to panic — to start pressing every spiritual “reset” button in sight. Maybe a new program, a shinier website, a bigger font in the bulletin will fix it. But the problem is deeper than that. It’s not that we’ve lost access to God; it’s that we’ve forgotten where we keep the key.
Jeremiah might have called this “forgetting the covenant.” Paul might have called it “losing the first love.” I call it “Tuesday morning before coffee.”
But here’s the good news: God doesn’t lock us out when we forget our login. Grace doesn’t come with two-factor authentication. We may forget our passwords, but God never forgets us.
The divine server is always running, so to speak. All we need to do is click “Remember me.”
So perhaps the Church that forgot its password isn’t in trouble at all. Maybe it’s being invited to pause — to rediscover the joy of logging back into the life of prayer, community, and compassion that it once knew by heart.
And maybe — just maybe — when we finally remember where we wrote it down, we’ll find that God has already reset it for us.
“For where your treasure is, there your password will be also.”
(Okay, not quite Scripture — but close enough for the techies)