This is the third and final post in my series on ministry and the internet. You can catch up on the other posts here and here.
What is the Church?
Just what is the church? It seems to me that is the central question when we begin to think through the implications of digitalism. As Mark Driscoll stated in his talk at Advance 09, the digital age is forcing us to reexamine and redefine our ecclesiology.
In my study, I’ve come to believe that the church is defined by:
- The preaching/teaching/proclamation of the word
- The administration of the sacraments (in my view communion and baptism)
- And the fellowship of the saints
As seen in Acts 2:42, “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
I don’t think there are too many people who would argue with such a definition. The real debate comes when we start asking whether this type of community can be done in the digital world.
Can the sacraments, for instance, be rightly administered online? Some people think so, as evidenced by Flamingo Road’s internet baptism as posted on Church Crunch. How about communion? Can that be administered online and still embody the New Testament concept of “breaking bread together”?
The Purpose of the Church?
I’m not going to debate here the intricacies of the sacraments and their relevancy online (mostly because I haven’t studied much on it). I’ll save that for another time. But what I do know is that the sacraments are a sign of coming into Christ, and traditionally (and scripturally) a first-step in joining the body of Christ that is the Church. They are not the end-all.
In looking at the purpose of the Church, I believe that the it exists primarily to:
- Equip the saints for the work of the ministry (Ephesians 4:11-16)
- To make disciples (Matthew 28:16-20)
These commissions are best accomplished by preaching, teaching, and proclaiming the word and by doing the word. As James says, you cannot do one without the other, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” And while some are called expressly to do the teaching and preaching (Ephesians 4:11-12), we are all called to proclaim the gospel and to do it.
When thinking of the purpose of the church in the context of Internet ministry, it’s easy to see how it is useful for proclamation – the preaching of the gospel. In that sense it is an excellent tool. It becomes harder to think of its usefulness in discipleship and in being a catalyst for bringing people beyond hearing the word to doing the word. This is because the Internet is an uncarnate environment that, as I’ve discussed in previous posts, is inherently geared towards engendering a people who consume rather than pour out. Yet, as a community of believers, we are called to do just the opposite – we are called to incarnate the gospel to the world.
The biggest challenge I see in the future of ministry is the pervasive acceptance of digital interaction as true community, replacing, not supplementing, physical community. Yet, in a Christian context, it is the daily interactions between believers that leads to discipleship. As Tim Chester and Steve Timmis write in their book, Total Church, “In becoming a Christian I am a disciple, but that is an identity, not an event. I never stop being a disciple, and I never reach a point where I no longer require daily discipleship by the gospel word in the gospel community.”
Event Driven Church vs. Rhythm Living
Ministries that are diving full force into the Internet by forming Internet campuses, doing online administrations of the sacraments, and more, are indicative to me of the more American expression of Christianity and church, which is an event driven model. For many people, church is just one of a many obligations or events that must be attended, consumed, and completed – an X on the calendar. It’s easy to say you go to church and believe you are part of a church in an online forum if you believe that church is about the Sunday event where you sing some songs and hear a sermon.
But that is not church. If anything that is evangelism, which to be clear is very important. But it is not true Christian community. It provides no true venue for discipleship, or the rhythms of Christian life that are depicted in the New Testament (eating together, praying together, serving together, etc.).
When you approach church as an event, it is easy to leave that church if the pastor says something that pisses you off. It’s even easier when all it takes is a click of a mouse, where no actual physical connection is severed. A rhythm centered approach to church where people are eating together in homes, giving to and taking care of those with need, discussing the scriptures in late night gatherings over coffee or a pint, serving arm in arm in doing the word and incarnating the gospel, and more creates bonds that are not easily broken – and ensures that if a fellow believer is straying, you have a real, valid, and tangible means to confront him or her in love.
Conclusion
Steve Knight, who was kind enough to reference this series on his blog, has written about the importance of reverse incarnation in the digital age. In that sense, the Internet is useful. But in reality, reverse incarnation is simply a fancy word for what we’ve already discussed is part and parcel with being the church – proclamation. We are to preach the word and proclaim the gospel in the digital world. But the digital world cannot replace the incarnate body of believers gathering together in community. You must have both.
I find it hard to understand how we can theologically justify Internet campuses as autonomous and fully functioning churches. Many will speak to their practicality, but we must be cautious when we move to speaking pragmatically without undergirding our pragmatism with theology.
In the end, the Internet is useful, but it can also lead to a disembodiment of the church that is not biblical. It is my prayer that as we move forward we don’t wholesale dive into new technologies because our culture demands it, but that we carefully, prayerfully, and with measure engage new technology in a way that continues the Church’s long and grand tradition of being in the world but not of it.
I invite your thoughts, beat downs, and undying adulation.
In wrapping this series up I think you’ve really honed in a particular focus: “Is a fully digital church viable?” You’ve made your case well and I agree with your conclusions, but in the process I think you’ve ended on a distilled and reduced definition of the Church in defining it’s bare-bones form and function. Your three-point definition of Church defines it by actions rather than identity. When I look at that definition I see the space for the empty execution of Church without the life and vibrance of Spirit-filled community. Any definition that could allow for nominally practiced institutions without Gospel infused transformation seems lacking. I think this line of thought supports your overall argument that digital Church is not a viable option because the pervasive call of the Gospel demands more connection, action, and life than broadband can supply. I believe there is a certain proximity necessary to really live out the call placed upon the Church through it’s continually deepening identity, rather than its institutional practices. In fact, I think that connection might be something we lost culturally along the way as families have grown smaller, walls have grown higher, and we created this inflated idea of a “personal life” in the era of modernism. Digitalism might be a response away from these trends as a way to regain the connection people used to experience in a more communal time (with a lot of extra ego added). This effort is inevitably going to fall short of what, we as Christians, know true community to be. It’s like they want to have their cake and eat it too, desiring the benefits of community without the self-sacrifice those benefits demand.
Also, in making this particular argument I think you’ve hinted at, but purposefully staved off, a whole heap of no less urgent, but perhaps more applicable questions about how a flesh and blood Church should interact, and encourage Christians to interact, with this new-fangled inter-web thing. “Digital church” can’t the only pitfall that churchmen are going to encounter in attempting to engage a new generation on their own turf. Any intentions of digging through some of those issues in future posts?
I like the concept … I have to read the articles thoroughly first. I just wanted to comment that God has been using the internet for fellowship and ministry.
I will read and comment further, but here’s my last blog post on a similar topic
http://bajanpoet.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/searching/
The Lord has used my blog, and Instant Messaging chats, to set his people free from Satanic torment – and, on the converse side – I have seen healings and people filled with the presence of the Lord from our interactions online. So the Internet should not be shied away from!
Like I said, I’ll be back!
Hey, just ran across these articles. You do an excellent job of describing where culture is at and the growing self defined focus. I just started looking at articles related to a forum discussion. I may at some point write some related articles at http://peacebringer7.wordpress.com.