It’s Sunday morning at one of today’s most innovative and fastest growing churches. Coffee is served. Ambient music fills the room. A screen displays a countdown clock announcing the service will begin in five minutes. People chat in the lobby while others sit in prayerful silence.
The worship leader appears and greets the congregation. A woman turns to her husband and says, “I can’t hear. Would you turn it up?” He obliges, clicking his mouse to increase the volume of his laptop speakers. She gives a nod of thanks and settles in to worship.
Welcome to virtual church.
The above lead to a story written by Chad Hall and recently published by ChristianityToday.com illustrates why some in the Christian community are leery about embracing internet campuses … it’s just too comfortable. After all, one might ask, can the Holy Spirit work virtually as well?
Rather than presume to know which way God works best out of the many ways His word is administered, I’ll just say that it has been a blessing for me to catch weekend services online. I’ve worked weekends for the past year-and-a-half and have rarely been able to attend a service in person over that time period. Thankfully, Saddleback Church broadcasts its weekend messages live over the Internet and although I can get really, really relaxed sitting there in my comfy chair in the den, I can report that I have been moved many times … intellectually and spiritually.
However, I do look forward to being able to attend services in person again. Meanwhile, I appreciate the effort given by churches building an online community. I like this quote in the same article…
“A big mistake is to think this is a technology thing. It’s not. This is a people thing,” says Bobby Gruenewald, founder of the online campus for LifeChurch.tv. “If a church focuses on the technology and the tools, they will likely fail. Whether it’s a physical site or virtual church, it’s all about relationship.”
Is virtual church a replacement for real church? It may be for a string of weekends or for a season such as mine (I still meet in person with church members for Bible study during the week), but I look at online services as an enhancement … or as described by one pastor written about in the article:
Mark Driscoll, pastor of Seattle’s Mars Hill Church, uses video venues and shares his sermons via podcasts, but sees such technological efforts as supporting the true church, not replacing it. Driscoll refuses to confer legitimacy on virtual churches because there cannot be giving and receiving of Communion, baptism, or church discipline, all of which require the physical presence of believers.
In his book Vintage Church, Driscoll writes, “In today’s Facebook world, electronic meeting can be a precursor or supplement to an actual gathering, so it seems a reasonable way for a seeker to check out a church …. But these cannot be a substitute for personal gathering if we follow God’s command in Hebrews 10:24-25.” For Driscoll, virtual church can be a worthwhile ministry of a church, “but cannot be the fullness of the church.”
