The Church and the Internet
At ZoeCity, one of many things we are trying to understand is, what will the church look like with the Internet. Knowledgeable Christians know that the church is actually not a building, but rather we, Christians, the people. We are the “body of Christ”. The church is and always will be a virtual congregation. It is not people meeting in a physical location at the same time. It is you and I, where we are right now. How will the Internet extend this beyond our current interpretation?
A significant change took place after the Pentecost, when Jesus sent us God’s gift, the Holy Spirit. After that it was no longer necessary to set foot on the temple to worship. The Holy Spirit resides in us. We are the temple. We are the church. When two or more persons gather together to worship God, regardless of location, God is with us.
Given this context, it is obvious to me that church, on the Internet is no more different than church, in the real world. As Christians we come together to a physical building to worship God, to have fellowship with each other, to learn from one another, to pray for and support each other. So the question then is, can we expand these four activities through the Internet? And if so, what will it look like?
For purposes of this discussion, I will make a distinction between the two separate concepts of the word “church”:
Church (place) = The physical place for Christians to publicly worship together.
Church (body) = We, the Christians, the people.
New Movement
I believe we are at the verge of a new movement. The evolution of cars went from horse carriages, to motored horseless carriages to cars as we know today. In moving from the old to the new, there is always a “bridge”.
When the Internet “came” in the late 1990s, many Christians started putting content on the Internet. Bibles, messages, sermons etc. were digitized and the text was made available on HTML webpages. Then it became a bit more sophisticated. Gospel Communications, an early adopter of the Internet, created BibleGateway.com and made the bible searchable and cross-reference-able. But they more or less stopped innovating and the site has been the same for the most part of this decade.
Then there’s prayer networks. Most of what you see today are nothing more than glorified HTML web forms that take in a prayer request and then forwarded as email to a group of people who will then physically pray together in a building somewhere for your needs.
In other words, church (place) activities on the Internet, despite being a perfect fit for virtualization, is still nothing more than a “copy” of its physical real-world version. We are still living in the horseless carriage phase.
Today
So what do we have today? Well, we have Christian social networks (ZoeCity including) which do no more than emulate their secular equivalents. Yes, we at ZoeCity are also guilty of this. We have prayer networks (as explained above). We have resources for worship in the form of MP3 or iTunes audio streaming. There’s IHOP (International House of Prayer) and they video stream a 24/7 worship movement. There’s also bible study through online bible references (as mentioned above). Certain ministries have gotten more sophisticated as they move beyond TV and radio into the Internet but again it’s either straight video or audio streaming.
In every single one of these examples, we see many of the four activities of the church (place), in various phases of the horseless carriage mode. Instead of video streaming through a cable network to your TV, it’s streaming through an ISP to your computer. Instead of reading your physical bible, you’re accessing it on a webpage. There has been no true innovation of what the Internet can truly extend to today’s church (body), which is already the perfect medium and consumer for virtualization.
The Internet has revolutionized many industries and activities because of a few specific characteristics. It has extended the limitations of time, space and scalability. Let’s examine this.
Time and Space
The Jewish festival Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) was a specific day of the year (time) where the High Priest of the Jewish faith would ask forgiveness on behalf of the Jewish nation at the nation’s Temple (place). When Jesus came, He displaced this act by being the true mediator between man and God. On His death at the cross, the veil or curtain that separated the room of the most holy was torn, signifying that man and God are once again re-united. Later in the Pentecost, this act was completed with the release of the Holy Spirit.
So here we are today, no longer bounded by time and space. Yet, most Christian’s concept of the church is to assemble on Sunday morning at the church (space) at a specific time (morning worship service) to worship God. Wow. Are we not back to the past? How are we different? First let me say that I fully support my local church and I believe 100% in going to church (place) on Sunday for corporate worship. However, it’s time we expand the benefits of church (place) beyond the four walls and extend its reach from the physical into the virtual.
The Internet is the greatest enabler of breaking past time and space. For the first time ever, people can come together and collaborate and communicate with each other at little to no cost. Our engineering office in Malaysia works with our Seattle office through an amazing round-the-clock development cycle. And when needed, they even work together at the same time and communicate real-time through Skype. Time and distance (space) has lost its barriers in the 21st century.
Scalability
When I write this blog, my message is made freely available to the entire planet to anyone with unrestricted access to the Internet. The distribution of opinions (publishing) has been democratized and all voices stand equal to those who wish to access them. Not so very long ago, a similar focal point in history had also democratized knowledge. The Printing Press broke free the word of God from the strict control of the Vatican. All of a sudden, with reasonable resources anyone can print a bible and everyone can afford to own a bible. The monopoly of opinions was broken. Martin Luther, the father of Protestantism, out-published the Roman Catholic church and started the Reformation movement. It is widely accepted today that it could not have happened without the democratization of knowledge, using the Printing Press technology.
Isn’t the Internet an even greater enabler of knowledge? Are we not on the verge of another movement in God? Where the Printing Press broke the financial constraints of publishing, the Internet broke the time, space and scalability constraints of publishing.
Tomorrow
So then, the question is this; what will the church (space) look like tomorrow? How will we worship God, have fellowship with each other, learn from one another, pray for and support each other through the Internet? Let’s examine the typical constraints of a senior church pastor today. As congregations grow, it becomes increasingly difficult to connect with and stay in touch with every single member. How many people can a pastor keep up with today through church meetings, phone calls and home visitations? How many more can this pastor affect through email, newsletters, blogs and twitter? Is corporate prayer restricted to prayer night at the church (space)? Can corporate worship expand beyond the worship band on Sunday morning? Can a pastor impart his wisdom of the Word beyond just sermons (and its digital manifestations of podcast, mp3 downloads or video streaming)? Is there a better way?
Colin Wong lives with his wife and three kids in the always sunny, never rainy wonderful land of Seattle.
