The Church Online
// January 21st, 2009 // Church Life
Sometimes my blog posts are more like me thinking out loud than a well-rounded thought. I think this will be one of those kinds of posts. My writing here has been infrequent in recent months, but this is something I’d love to get some discussion on. So, all you lurkers and feed subscribers jump in here when the spirit moves ya.
I’ve been pondering this idea of the church online for some time now. Let me clarify what I mean, since the definitions on these terms tends to get pretty varied. By “church online” I don’t just mean a church’s website. I’m not talking about simply putting your sermons online or even broadcasting your services live online with open commenting via a mogulus player (or something similar). Those are all great things to do, but not particularly out of the box. It’s really just another evolution of what larger churches have been doing for years by broadcasting their services on television.
No, I’m talking about something that only a few churches are daring to do right now which is having an entire church online with it’s own “online pastor” and everything. I’m talking about an online presence that is not just an extension of an “offline” church (presumably functioning primarily to funnel people from the web into the pews), but rather something that exists on it’s own all online.
I must admit, when I first discovered lifechurch.tv doing this, I scoffed. “This is a bad trend!”, I exclaimed. Since then, some of my presuppositions about how people connect in general, what the Church is and how it grows have been challenged. So I’m waffling on my first opinion.
This is too big of a topic to deal with fully in one blog post, but in my own reading and thinking on the subject, I’ve come up with a few advantages and challenges to this concept. I’ll list them and let’s see where it takes us.
Advantages to taking the Church online:
- Christianity has truly gone global. It’s no longer a Western religion, bound up in Western culture and religious overtones. We don’t own it anymore. The internet affords us the opportunity to participate in that global Christianity in a significant and personal way.
- It’s missional – the role of the Church is to advance the Kingdom of God into places where the Kingdom of Darkness rules. Bringing the Church online allows us to take the Kingdom of God all over the world and into people’s lives that would otherwise NEVER venture into a church building on a Sunday morning.
- Decentralization – the community is not as dependant on the church and it’s pastor to facilitate interpersonal connection so that ministry can happen more fluidly and with less administrative cost to the organization
- The church becomes less program driven and more organic in the way it grows and functions.
- Bang for your buck – In comparison to starting a new offline church, the cost is astronomically lower and the return on investment (in terms of people reached) can be great.
Challenges to taking the Church online:
- Replacing face-to-face contact with virtual contact – I’m not sure this is as big a problem as many think it will be. We have this problem in our offline churches as it is. It’s just that these disconnected people have learned to put a well-crafted façade on when they come to church on Sunday and sit in the back corner. As a pastor, however, I know that I can see that disconnected person on Sunday morning and make attepts to draw them into community. The challenge online is to have a mechanism in place that allow the online pastor to do the same thing.
- Accountability/church discipline – church discipline is a sensitive topic that I really don’t want to get into. Not many churches even do it anymore for fear of being accused of being “controlling”. However, I think we can all agree that part of the role of the local church is to hold to a standard of purity. How do you do that online? If a guy is sleeping around on his wife and calling himself a Christian and is a participating member of your online campus, how do you handle that?
- Baptism – I just thought of this the other day and I haven’t asked around to see how existing online campuses handle this one. How do you baptize people in an online community? What about weddings and funerals?
What do you think? I find that the biggest barrier in our thinking to making something like this work is the false assumption that real and meaningful relationships cannot happen across the web. That’s silly, really. People have been building relationships over the phone and through correspondance for a very long time. Is there a difference?
[tags]internet, church online, online campus, technology, christianity[/tags]
I think the idea is one that should be talked about in depth because we must use technogly to reach people with the Gospel. There are many ways to structure this. I am going to school online full time and every is done online except if I have to call to ask questions. In regards to Baptisms you wold have to do once a year at a central location like an online school does a graduation. I like it for an exsiting church looking to do a mid week service, or bible study and you can say to a friend at church, Check out my church at this site. My Pastor will be in His house siting on His coutch doing a Bible study. If you were to do a full online church to me you would have to have central locations that people could meet in your network. If you had a main church in every state that was connected to you then it would help with Baptisms as well. My wife works in the technolgy field and we always talk about ways to use it for the Kingdom and its a topic that the Church has to discuss in depth because we need to be on the cutting edge to Advance the Kingdom of God.
I like the idea of having online campuses attached to local sites. That would make it easier to have local meetups, baptisms, etc. Cool idea.
You should study top online schools. My wife is going for her Phd. and 3 times a year she has to meet for a certain amount of days for her classes. Just a thought,,,
Great post Ben. I think this is where an effective online church is one that uses online tools to facilitate church. It is not about being or doing everything online completely. In our context it is nice that we have some physical locations to push people too, our campuses across the US and our small groups that meet in person. Identifying leaders in these areas begins to build that network of people and build vision to those attending. I know our leaders in London have created such great momentum around the idea of what can happen in "your area." It is exciting to see how the church can use these tools for the glory of God. Always learning :)
That's awesome. I think what I love about what's happening is that the Church at large is becoming more interconnected and less sectioned off in local silos. These online campuses are allowing small (or any size) local churches to become intimately connected to the global Church. Online, nobody seems to care what denomination, tradition, or church size you belong to.
Thanks for stopping by and giving us some insight “from the trenches”.
I also think a traveling minister could use this to teach small groups and have selected meetings like a marriage conference in where him and his wife are sitting together doing it that way. You could do live conferences and people that cant attend pay online and get the same material if they were there. I would love to read more on this topic.
Now you're talking! Even better, you could have multiple speakers doing different sessions from all over the world. No travel time, no hotel stays, no venue booking, etc.
Thanks for getting this going, Ben. You know, Jesus always went to where the people were who needed him, and He didn't demand that they change anything except their hearts. Those people who don't want to come to church, or even be approached by an evangelistically-minded Christian will attend an online church meeting BECAUSE of the anonymity! That's awesome! I think we as the Church should be using this, and not just talking about it. I can totally envision some hacker in his mom's basement finding an online church at 2:00 am after playing World of Warcraft for hours, and deciding to check out the online service because the graphics are cool, and he's bored. Then, BAM – the Holy Spirit convicts him, and he responds! If there's someone online to take his questions, that hacker could get saved right there in front of his computer.
How cool would it be then for him to get connected with a group of young guys in his area that also attend that same online church, and maybe he could even end up simultaneously attending a brick & mortar church in his area.
This would be a great tool for church networks too – the network could start an online church, and give all of it's members connections at member churches in their area. It's something that could facilitate a level of unity in the Body of Christ that would not have been dreamed of five years ago.
I think the key is using current technolgy and being on the cutting edge. Almost like face book where something is going on all the time. Texas instruments has great software for that. If you have great software and a cutting edge style too it I think you can run with it,
Texas Instruments? Tell us more…
So true, Joseph! The potential is amazing.
The best thing is too talk to my wife. She works with developers for that type of material for the web. There is different software you can google up. Online schools use a technology called Black Board that you can get for free. Then you will need quailty video conferencing that can handle alot of veiwers,,,,,,,,,