Church fellowship is meant for any discernable community, anywhere. In other words, the Church in concept is to expand to and explore any identifiable collection of people. There are no biblical requirements that every church have every demographic, which would be silly. Every church has its own version of a limited demographic. In contrast, as Dave B points out, the online world is astoundingly well populated. So where there are people that gather in any kind of discernable community, there we are called to take the gospel and by implication, plant “the church”. And of course who is best placed to take the church to the online community but online Christian pioneers, who “as they go there” take the evangel with them. Speaking now as a pastor of 30 years, we desperately need to devote as a Christian community all we can to establishing online means of lifting up Christ; we dare not refuse to travel this means of human connection. Now, do I think that an online church is “the same” philosophically as an on-the-ground church? No. But it may be the best way to minister to those in the online community!

Thanks for providing the forum to explore this topic, Dave B.

Dave Hackett, Seattle

Dave,

Thanks for the feedback. A couple quick thoughts:

1) I don’t think that the argument I made in the email is the main argument either. It’s just an approach I’ve been kicking around and haven’t seen addressed much yet, so I thought I would try it out. It’s clearly limited (as I pre-emptively pointed out!). : )
2) My argument isn’t an argument against ministering to those online (this applies to Dave’s comment). If anything, I’ve been trying to do precisely that for the past 5 years (in my own little way).
3) A large number of people may mean there’s a mission field there, but it doesn’t then entail that we have to conform our church practices to their way of being IF those church practices and their way of being are, in fact, opposed. I suspect, for instance, that if we found an unreached people group who wrote letters in human blood, we wouldn’t “set up church” in that culture using their means of communication. The question, of course, is whether disembodied communication online is actually at odds with the communication that happens in Church, which drives at the deeper issues of ecclesiology. So YES to missionary work online, no to the idea that we can use online media to experience church.

Just a few quick replies. Thanks for the thoughts, and I look forward to dialoging more about this.

matt

A few random thoughts:

I guess it depends how we define ‘church’.

It would be interesting to see a research study done on people who self-describe themselves as members of online churches.

I think that ‘online church’ could be very helpful to anyone who did not have the opportunity to belong to a physical church fellowship, through a physical disablement or any of a wide range of mental issues, eg agarophobia. Living 50 miles from a ‘real’ fellowship in an islamic country too, perhaps.

Someone pointed out not long ago the downside of belonging to a physical church which streams its services online. The temptation can be to stay in bed, and watch the service online!!

But if we mean by the question, could or should committed Christians who have the easy opportunity to belong to a physical fellowship of people meeting together in the locality, choose not to do so, and only belong to a non-geographical online church group, it seems hard to me to understand how that could be an equivalent substitute and offer (among many things) the depth of relationships, support, and opportunities to serve, in the way that physical church should.
But let’s see the research!

Blessings

Tony

A PS to my comments – how a web meeting place can help hurting people who for whatever reason cannot cope with the institutional church – or at least the bit they have experienced:
Introducing Communitas Collective: A Cyber Hang Out for the ormerly Churched and other Refugees of church.

Blessings

Tony