The Deep Limitations of Digital Church

Do you go to the Internet for church? Cathy Lynn Grossman of USA Today reported this week on the increasing use of digital technology by churches. This trend is not new, of course, but some of the developments she traces are fresh and innovative.

She begins with a look at Christ Fellowship in McKinney, Texas — a church Grossman describes as “on board with almost every high-tech gambit under heaven.”

She then writes:

“Find the church by going online — the 21st-century version of sighting a steeple on the horizon. Beyond their website, Christ Fellowship has a Facebook page to give it a friendly presence in social media.

You can download the worship program by scanning their customized-with-a-cross QR code. The worship services are streamed online from their Internet campus — with live chat running so you can share spiritual insights in real time.

Afterward, says senior Pastor Bruce Miller, ’someone will ask you, ‘How did it go? Did God help you, today? How can we help you?’ Just like we do when people come to our building in McKinney. We are here to help people find and follow Christ, wherever they are starting out from.’

And wherever they are in the digital world.”

There is something good, healthy, and Great Commission-minded about the eager use of new communication technologies. Digital technologies and social media have transformed our world, redefining how human beings engage one another and how we all access information. A church without a digital presence is a church that, to many people, simply doesn’t exist.   Continue at Al Mohler

Multisite, the Poker Tell and the Importance of Presence

Any classic rock fan knows that there is nothing quite like hearing a live band.   A few years ago, I went to hear The Who (or at least Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend, the extant members).  I remember listening on the way home to a live recording of 'Won't Get Fooled Again' just after hearing the real thing in the stadium.  Even without Moon and Entwistle, the live performance was so much more powerful than the recording which, in the immediate aftermath of the concert, sounded like an anemic cover by a wannabe boy band.  The same thing applied next day to my watching of the video of the last time the original line-up ever played together, performing that very song.  It was simply not a patch on actually being there, despite the absence of Keith and John.

Presence is important.   In a world where it is easy to simulate presence, even visible presence as by television, webcam or skype, it remains the case that actually being in the immediate physical proximity of somebody is important.   We all intuitively know this: given the choice of talking to a loved one on the phone or over a camera link up or in the same room, who would not want actually to be with them?

This raises an important question about the notion of multi-site ministry, where the preacher is piped in to various locations by satellite link-up or fibre optic cable.  Of course, this practice is susceptible to numerous lines of devastating critique.   One might suggest that it moves the church towards a model where the accent in preaching is increasingly on the information communicated, nothing more; one might also raise questions about the way it detaches pastoral care of congregations and individuals from the ministry of public proclamation.  For church officers it should surely be a nerve-wracking notion that pastors are to be held accountable for those entrusted to their care; and how can they give a credible account of such care if they do not know the faces, let alone the names, of those thus entrusted to them?  Continue at Carl Trueman