There is something to be said about utilizing new technology to connect church members with other church members, both within the local community as well as in the broader global community. You can find out what's happening, share news/concerns, hear a sermon that you missed, etc.

But I think I agree with Bob Hyatt here... the community of faith is best lived out in the inconvenience of personal interaction. When church stops being messy, smelly, ugly, etc, I wonder if it is even church any more. We need that pain of interaction. Top it off with the fact that a major portion of human communication is non-verbal AND the misunderstandings that are SO rampant in "text-only" communications, and you end up with a church that is a consumer based church-like thing and not a church community.

As I've been following this discussion of new virtual models of "church" a question came to mind. I think we can presume that the kinds of churches creating these ministries, are, for the most part, thriving fiscally, numerically, etc. It also seems true that these churches have, oftentimes, squads of people doing leadership, vision-casting, direction and equipping. If this is the case, how is it possible that they don't have home-grown leaders to establish new congregations? How is it that when they have a new position open, the solution is to poach someone from another church? It seems to me that the bigger the church and the more people there, oftentimes the least amount of actual relationship development happens with a vision for the future of the church (it would be an interesting statistic to track down how many home-grown leaders are developed in churches that are doing these kinds of ministries). The gift of teaching isn't that rare that there is only 8 or so people out of every 10,000 that have it! Virtual church, it seems to me, is the easier solution to leadership development; it the is place where pragmatism wins the day against true shepherding.

Yes, thank you.

It may as well be drive-in church most of the time anyway. With the amount of interaction that normally happens in church services we may as well sit in a cubicle/car/at home and watch a worship DVD and a satellite preacher.

God is really lucky He has smart people working everyday to make His church better. It really started with the Ancient Jewish people who decided that God did not have enough Laws for His people. So they made a whole bunch more. Then the Ancient Catholics decided that the local house church system was very ineffective at deciding who should have more say over God's revelation. But it is us Protestants that have really made God's Church work in our Culture. We bring together our two loves. God and Shopping. First the drive in, now the e-church. Though we were pioneers on Self-Checkout years ago!

Thank you for articulating some concerns about the cyber-church (or whatever we're calling it this week)that I've had as I've followed this discussion on Out of Ur.

When the net based churches start baptizing people and observing the Lord's Supper, I'll change my mind.

This is an amazingly timely message as I was just sitting last night pondering the potential for a "cyber church" type ministry. My conclusion was the same as Mark's - it can't baptize people and observing the Lord's Supper would be an interesting act (though not entirely impossible from a technical perspective). My conclusion was that we can call it a lot of things - a ministry, even possibly a chapel, but definitely not a church.

My problem, though, is that we still need to reconcile with the technology so we can meet and evangelize people where they are. The reality is that we already have a lot of "misshapen" people who are lost.

Ministries that launch online churches out of their already-successful churches (LifeChurch.tv) are doing amazing work before, during, and after the online service. And I don't know of any online church whose end goal is to allow the church member to STAY online. This is a hook with potential global impact. I don't know about you, but I didn't share Jesus with a woman from Pakistan last Saturday. But I watched it happen at LifeChurch.tv, in a chatroom, during the service. There were 4 or 5 loving Christians, reaching out to this woman with the grace of Jesus. It was beautiful.

The online church is a connecting point, just like Facebook and Twitter. And the easiest thing for Christians to do is to immediately dismiss it as another invalid form of "church". I think it would be better for us to wait and see before we dismiss it. And in the meantime, we could certainly pray that these churches fish in areas our local churches will never touch.

Does it have potential danger? Yes. The relational connections thing worries me. But the very same issue worries me in my local church.

Community. That is what the church is, and it comes in many forms. Some may have more potential problems than others, but for those who can make it work, hurrah!

Accountability is a big Potential problem with the online stuff. Gary intimates at this, that there has to be a way to connect beyond the online. We have actually been doing it for years. We send missionaries off to foreign lands with minimal contact for years. They could be running amuck and all we have are the "prayer letters" for validation. There are several programs that connect people to prisoners and they work through Bible studies from a distance. They work, even though there is no contact. There is even a XXX church - talk about potential downfall (imagine what the founders of AA heard - "What? Get together a bunch of alcoholics to get dry? That's like palying in mud with white gloves, and trying to get the mud "glovey")

So what I say is listen to the cautions, but don't let them exclude the church from "being all things to all people so that (we) may reach some." And don't let the failures be the standard for the ministry when there are successes. If is not for you, fine; but it may be for someone else.

I just recently listened to a very large church that is rolling out a stream of their service. They have several goals, none of which is designed to keep people at home.

One is to provide Christians in communities where a good church to invite the unchurched does not exist an opportunity to invite their unchurched friends over.

The second is for people who would love to lead a church but not necessarily have to deliver messages every Sunday.

Wrapping a delivery system with interactive connection is designed as an entry point to connecting rather than a replacement.

There is no replacement for connecting in community.

Hi Bob. I think you're falling into the same oversimplifications made by Hipps and a few others. Virtual community and physical community are not mutually exclusive. They are part of an expanding ecclesial continuum.

Get used to it: virtuality is playing an increasingly central role in new generational forms of community. It cannot -replace- F2F community, but enhances it ways that I believe will profoundly and positively redefine Christianity over coming generations.

I'm with you, Bob. Kyle, I think you made the best follow-up points. I don't think this is just about new forms of communication, because being a body is not just about communication. There are things a church does that simply can't be done online. Think, for instance, of the Eucharist: Partaking together from a common table, as Jesus and his disciples did, shows something different from a score of watchers eating a wafer/cracker/bit of bread that each has gotten from his or her own pantry. When you change the form, you change the meaning that the form imparts or implies.

Comparing Internet Campuses to Drive-In church is like saying that eating bison at Ted's Montana Grill is just like getting burger at a fast food joint. They are both alternatives to eating beef at home, but they have nothing in common.

At my old church, I was trying to get the leadership to come around supporting an online campus, but I was shut down and told that was just another excuse for people not to come to church. That perspective can only come from a person that doesn't know what it's like to not be a churchgoer. I grew up in a religion that believed that if you walked in the doors of a church, the devil would jump on your back and convince you that the truth was a lie and the lies were the truth. So, for me, walking into a church for the first time was quite a scary thing. And, although my background isn't common, I think that a lot of unchurched people feel similarly uncomfortable. So, making an online environment where people can learn about Christ and his Gospel without having to physically enter a building is something that God has definitely put on my heart.

Also, I have seen so many people open up and take big risks and leaps of faith online that they wouldn't felt safe enough to do in a "real world" church that I almost feel like church is more real online than it often is on location.

Don't get me wrong, it still feels weird on SecondLife when you make your avatar raise its hand to God during worship, but it doesn't feel weird when you are praying with someone across a live chat because they were contemplating suicide and you were there to share Christ with them just when they needed Him.

"people who would love to lead a church but not necessarily have to deliver messages every Sunday."

So much for "Preach the Word, in season and out of season." God save us from such "leaders".

The online church is a connecting point, just like Facebook and Twitter." Br.Gary, please, forgive my Ukrainian Pentecostal expression, but I always thought that the way of "fellowship" you've just described although a popular substitution,but is a real relationship-killing one. Thus I find the beginning of this article very promising and quite timely.

I've said it before and I will say it again.

What bothers me about many of the comments here is that they are pure pragmatics, and lack any kind of theological reflection on what a church is. Online streams may be a connection point, a learning tool, a way to bring people to the gospel who normally wouldn't...but this does not make them a church.

We can love online streams, but Christ didn't die for those.

Ultimately, if online streams don't lead to people gathering together under Christ, having worship (Eph. 5:19), speaking the gospel and through it being encouraged in the hope, faith, and love they have (Hebrew 10:23-25), "one-another-ing" each other, and participating in the sacraments together, then they aren't a church. They may be useful, they may be missions tools, but that is what they should be seen as and used as.

In the age of online "church" streams":

Web Pastors will need to be driven constantly by the desire to lose their flock to local pastors.

Senior pastors and vision teams won't just want to see an increasing number of views, but an ever increasing wave like pattern of gain and loss as their people joins (or creates!) local churches.

Otherwise the online stream isn't fulfilling its role.

Not sure that's at all what the digital church is all about. It helps those who don't make it out because they are shut in.

Lussier, I don't remember reading in the Bible that Christ died for live, in-person preaching. Nor did he die for preaching in Latin, or preaching from a pulpit high in the air, or preaching from a hill in a field, or preaching from a microphone hundreds of yards from the back row.

Good change is not always DRIVEN by theological reformation. Sometimes change is DRIVEN by a pragmatic realization of the size of the mission that Jesus gave us and an understanding that it ain't gonna get done without utilizing technology.

I think I just got straw-manned.

Scott, you are right. Christ didn't die for that stuff, he died for the church. And I contend that individuals, completely seperate from one another, listening to a message and worship is not the church.

Christ didn't die for that. He died for people who are "living together", gathered under Christ, for various purposes like hearing the word, taking the sacraments, worship, nurture, mission, etc.

We can love pragmatic realization as much as we want as long as it's in line with scripture. The internet church is pragmatic realization that doesn't seem to be in line with the scriptures definition/marks/common characteristics/whatever of what a church is.

Someone needs to argue that, not the pragmatics of it, not the "this is bigger than us", not the impact internet church is having, but how the internet church can actually, scripturally, be a church.

Brando or Skye- I think the last line of this should read: "And that’s the problem. The lack of all of that forms me. But not in a good way."

It reads a little differently here...

:)

I just cannot imagine getting to heaven and having the Lord ask, "by the way, HOW exactly did you hear about me?"
Church schmurch, NT churches were houses and fields and street corners, NOT renovated basketball arenas filled to the brim with tens of thousands of members and 8 and 9 figure budgets and a publishing arm and a recording studio and....and....and....
Bigger is not better and it's not what matters,
nor is how the word is spread, regardless if the reached soul does not show up in YOUR local church ever.
perhaps the good news was so compelling, that person is out TELLING someone else of the good news on Sunday and not listening to yet another 12 chorus rounds of a 90's Tomlin song...again.
Refocus people.

John L-

"It cannot -replace- F2F community"
Really?
Because I thought that was the *point* of online/internet church.

And if it's not, let's call it what it is- a particularly slick evangelism strategy that we quickly encourage people to grow out of. I'd be behind that!
But we both know that's not what it is.

What it is is simply a way of pulling more disaffected and discouraged Christians into the fold of a particular church- numbers and resources- without thought to the ongoing, formative and mis-shaping nature of the thing.

Yes- online interaction is here to stay.
Soon, people will have online husbands and wives (they already have online affairs, right?)
I suppose we'd be in favor of that? No?
Why ever not?

I enjoyed the discussion and the topic. We discuss iconoclasm in the class i teach at Regent University, but you opened my eyes to a new context.
Nicholas B

I'm afraid "virtual church" is the logical next step after the 1990s "market-driven church." It's another step in the wrong direction: away from Christ ... and toward me!

A double minded person!!

1Corithians9:12 Do you not know that they which minister about Holy things live of the temple and they whcih wait at the altar are partakers of the altar?

Hear people you can not drink the cup in good and the cup in evil you can not be partaker at the table of God and serve at the table of the devil be wise to judge what I say the cup offer blessings and is not the carnal communion of bread and wine but of the Rock. God is the Rock, His Words are bread to the soul and the wine is the wisdom to the head. Eat(read) and drink(absorb) the true cup of God.
http://worshipwiththetruth.blogspot.com

Hey folks, "me thinks this is much ado about nothing". I don't hear any of you criticizing TV broadcast of services, or live airing of church on the radio. What's up with that? The Word is the Word and the Bible tells us that "It will not return void". Let's focus on reaching out, not on putting up a sign that says, "If you want to hear about Jesus, come inside."