Recently, I was involved in a meeting of pastors in my denomination and among the many things we talked about was Virtual “Church”. And many were extolling the virtues of Virtual “Church” during the pandemic. Moreover, they were talking about how having streaming for their services was going to be a way to attract people to their churches and build their congregations. Virtual “Church” was the big-end of the funnel. Now, believe it or not, I’m actually OK with being the lone voice of dissent in pretty much any group I’m in. In fact, I kinda relish being the lone voice of dissent. And I was the Minority Report on the issue of Virtual “Church”. And I said that I didn’t really believe in it and I didn’t intend on doing it – at least not long term as anything other than an accommodation to shut-ins and right now, for people in high-risk categories for ‘Rona.
Now, you’re probably wondering what the deal is with the quotation marks around “Church” in “Virtual ‘Church’”. Well, it’s because I don’t believe Virtual Church is…Church. Sure it’s the broadcast of a Church service. And people can participate virtually…but virtual participation is different than participation. It’s virtually participating. And I don’t mean “virtually” in the sense of via internet. I mean it in the normal use of the word: “the same, but not really.”
Because in any other part of life, we would use the word “virtual” and know that it means: the same, but not really. Virtually married ain’t married. Virtually working somewhere is different than drawing a wage. Virtually being a lawyer will get you sent to jail! I don’t want to be treated by someone who’s virtually a doctor! I don’t want our police and military to virtually be armed.
No, in many things, if not most things…in fact, pretty much all things…we recognize that: “virtually” ain’t “is”. Nobody would be happy if their employer said they were virtually going to provide health insurance! No, not virtually: you are or you aren’t. In a lot of places in life, “virtually” has no place! It’s unacceptable. We want the genuine article, with the bona fides, and the certificate of authenticity commemorating Ernest Borgnine’s visit with the Pope at Dodger Stadium! A lot of times “virtually” just doesn’t cut it – we need the real thing.
And, what’s more, we all know this. We know that virtual and genuine are different, and we know the word is used differently. We know that there is a real and appreciable gap. So, why do we pretend that Virtual Church is Genuine Church?! We all know it’s not. We know it isn’t the same. So why do we pretend it is?
But, see the problem is that within contemporary Evangelicalism Virtual “Church” is, in fact, indistinguishable from actual church. You see, when people “attend” Virtual “Church” what are they doing? They’re watching, primarily, the sermon. That’s what Virtual “Church” is, largely, reduced to. Which is as much to say that all we’re doing of a Sunday morning is delivering content, with varying ratios of instruction and motivation.
If the only reason people come to my church is to hear me, then we have a very serious problem. 1) I ain’t that good. If you’re getting out of bed just to hear me, you need to find better sources of entertainment. 2) That means that we have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Worship Service actually IS.
The Worship Service, aka Church, is about – if you have pearls: prepare to clutch them – worship! I know, shocker, right! The Sunday morning Worship Service is about worship. But what does that mean? Well, there are several basic answers to that, in our culture, which push things to extremes.
On one hand, there are people who believe that worshipping God is about praising Him. Others believe it’s about living for Him. And so, the people who believe it’s all about praise, they think that the important part of worship is singing and prayer. The “living for Him” crowd, well, what they want is content – they want to be instructed in how to live for Christ. Both sides are actually seeking to be better disciples. And both sides seek to make disciples. But both sides have an inadequate view of worship. That’s because worship is not, primarily about singing and praying and poetry and praises. Nor is it primarily about the intellect and being motivated to act. It’s about both, because real worship happens when we love God with all our heart, soul, and strength. The whole of human personality is comprised here. We worship by loving God. And, of course, this includes singing and praying and learning and acting in certain ways.
But here’s where we come to an impasse. You see, worshipping, which is really living out the command to love the Lord our God with everything in us, also comes with a second command which is so crucial that it’s impossible to carry out the first without carrying out the second and that’s to love our neighbors as ourselves. Moreover, we’re to love, especially, the Brethren! We are to love our brothers and sisters the way we love ourselves. And that means that we need to spend time with them. It means we have to pray with them. It means we have to sing with them – matching their key and their tempo. It means we have to smile and eat their casseroles while they smile and eat ours. It means we serve eachother communion and wash eachother’s feet and support eachother in times of need and help raise their kids in the faith as they help raise yours! It means being there for them and with them in the good times and the hard times.
You can’t virtually lay hands on someone. You can’t be virtually anointed with oil. You can’t virtually receive communion. You can’t virtually wash someone’s feet. You can’t virtually sing with people. You can’t virtually laugh with those who laugh and weep with those who weep. You can’t do these things because these are the things that need to happen in person. And what’s more, the trend to move towards a sacramentless, sterilized, anti-participational view of church is devastating because it feeds into all our worst impulses as Americans. It drives the urge to commodify and commercialize. Virtual “Church” is transactional in the worst way. Worse and worse, there’s not any accountability whatsoever. It fuel’s our isolationist tendencies which are anathema to the gospel.
Now, I get that there are places where Virtual “Church” is the best sub-optimal option. I understand that. But, the problem is that that’s not how it’s being viewed. It’s being viewed with hope as a “new way” of “doing church”. It’s being touted as the big-end of the funnel. I don’t doubt that it is! But is the little end pointing in or out?! And if it is the “new way” can someone, please, explain to me what was wrong with the “old way”? Why do we need to jettison the “old way”? Was politely requesting that people who want to be members need to come to an in person service for an hour and a half a week every few weeks such an onerous demand?
Well, yeah, I think for lots of people it was. Why? Because, for those who hate going to church, 1 of 2 things is happening. 1, the “church” they go to is not worshipping and glorifying Jesus Christ through the right preaching of the word, the right administration of the sacraments, and the right use of Church discipline, and so their “church” has become a hokey, gimmicky, dog-and-pony show, or a thinly-or-not-at-all-veiled weekly political commentary. And, truth be told even the most spectacular spectacular gets old after a while. Or 2, the people who don’t want to worship don’t want to worship because they don’t love God.
In other words, if going to your church’s “worship” seems unappealing to you it’s either because it’s not worship, you’re not a Christian, or both. But real worship, worship that rightly administers the Word, Sacrament, and Discipline, is a worship that ought to set fire to the hearts of any true believer, nomatter what their theological or denominational stripes.
The problem with the old way wasn’t the old way – it was that we left of the path and kept saying we were on the old way when really we weren’t on any-way, but wandering in circles. Sadly, tragically, too many churches have stripped down their services to the barest of bare, dry bones, trying to make the “service” sleek and smooth – making it a production; that’s all it really was. And, of course, there’s nothing wrong with a production, as long as that’s not all a worship service is. Because, as I’ve said many times, there’s a big difference between worship that’s performative and worship that’s a performance. All worship is performative – but when it becomes man-pleasing and perfunctory it becomes a performance. We’ve striven to inject passion and verve and joie de vivre by having rock concerts and coffee bars and having the hippest of all the cool-kids give us motivational speeches about how to fix our marriage, or have better sex, or have better kids, or have a better diet, or have a better job, or have a better neighborhood, or have a better government. And for many people it was a relief to take a break from theology and worship that is demanding – because let’s not pretend that the truly joy-creating and life-giving things in this world aren’t hard! The profoundest joys come from the hardest work and the deepest struggles; the purest silver comes from the hottest crucible – and in the relaxation from the demands of a worship that rightly administers the Word, Sacraments, and Discipline, which people found in the seeker-friendly movement, they began to drowse. And many began to sleep and slumber. And some who didn’t know any better thought that there wasn’t any better so they didn’t look for any better and they became lost. Seeker-friendly churches, thus, are like a Mexican resort – very nice for those who have the wealth, but beyond the walls of the hotel, you find poverty and rags and crime and death. Those who were real believers who got into seeker-friendlyism thought it was a fun change of pace; but for those who entered without the accumulated spiritual wealth of solid theology and bible teaching it became a faith-wrecking disaster. And for those who didn’t know the Gospel at all, it became an impoverishing, desperate death trap.
The fact of the matter is that whatever benefit seeker-friendlyism and the demand-free, easy-going evangelicalism had, have outused their lifefullness. Whatever spiritual life was in the preaching, teaching, discipling, and living has long since been exhausted and with no new life being injected, cool-kid evangelicalism is dying on the vine – it’s dying because it hasn’t got life within itself and therefore has none to offer to anyone else.
The simple fact is that churches in America are in trouble and going virtual is not a solution. We aren’t going to make disciple making disciples by charging headlong into the fray of tech culture. We aren’t going to do it by trying to be cloyingly nice. We aren’t going to do it by blowing with every wind of doctrine to come from our godless culture in the pathetic attempt to not have Jesus-hating people hate Jesus-loving people.
If the church in America – if our churches – if the church I pastor, is going to have a long-term future, it’s not going to be because we out worlded the world, but because we strive to be what God has called us to be: salt; light; fishers-of-men; baptizers of all nations; teachers; ambassadors for Christ; a city on a hill; a kingdom of priests; the temple of the living God; the Body of Christ! Let’s stop trying to be what the world wants and seek to become what Christ has called us to.