After I wrote the post for yesterday, I soon stumbled on yet another model for church that I was vaguely aware of, but had forgotten about. Perhaps because for me it's a stretch to think of this model as "church." It's the internet church. There's a long article in the link above, which I read, trying to understand how something that happens through the internet can possibly be called "church." Here's what Brian Vasil of Flamingo Road Church says about their internet campus:
"Many people hear of internet campus and think that it must be pretty passive—people sitting in their pajamas watching a video. But we have leveraged technology to provide a chat room where worshippers mingle and talk with one another and with me, their campus pastor. We also have online Bible studies and online programs for teens and kids. Through the week, our internet campus offers forums, book studies, leadership studies, and small groups. We take prayer requests online—about 150 each week."
Evidently, they are reaching a pretty impressive audience:
"Church Online reaches about 5,000 people each week through 22 scheduled online experiences," he says. Like others in the internet church movement, he admits that exact numbers are hard to determine, but reports that each week there are over 50,000 unique IP addresses logging in, with roughly one in ten staying for the entire service."
Brad Singleton of Seacoast Church in SC says their online audience can light a candle, write a note of confession or prayer and nail it to a virtual cross, pray with Brad in a private chat room, tithe, and even take Communion.
All this leave me with lots more questions than answers. Is this really church? The article referenced above asks the same question.
Bob Hyatt, pastor of The Evergreen Community in Portland, Oregon says virtual churches "create distance between leaders and the led, the teachers and the taught, and the serving and the served. While having real community can be difficult in a megachurch, it's impossible in a virtual church. Not only does virtual church fail to form us in necessary ways, I believe it has a malforming effect because it's just communal enough to provide some of the easiest and most instantly satisfying pieces of community without the harder, more demanding parts."
Like a good radio ministry or cable program, internet church can expand the ministry of a church, but it cannot replace the ministry of a local church. A church cannot be defined by IP addresses. As Mark Driscoll writes in Vintage Church, "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."