Church online offers virtual worship and community

What the church looks and feels like is changing right before our eyes, and on our computer screens.

This article from The Gadsden Times (Alabama), "Now on your computer screen: Sunday services," tells the story of how the Church Online of LifeChurch.tv is reaching people around the world:

... The 32-year-old [Bobby] Gruenewald is a pastor at LifeChurch.tv, an Edmond, Okla., organization that, with tens of thousands of followers, has created a virtual house of worship, with sermons, prayer and Bible study for an international congregation.

... Gruenewald said the average “congregation” at any given time on a Sunday is about 3,000 visitors, but over the course of the 90-to-120-minute services, between 12,000 and 15,000 unique viewers will log on. The services incorporate live preaching, songs and sermons from the church’s physical locations across the United States through a live feed, while viewers can chat with one another or church volunteers.

To further connect virtual users, the site also employs a chat function that automatically translates their language into a language of one’s choosing. Someone in Brazil can type a comment in Portuguese, for example, and it will be translated instantaneously to English for a viewer in Idaho. This feature, church leaders say, fosters a sense of immediate community among people with no other commonalities besides an abiding interest in Jesus.

And, Beliefnet blog entry "How Facebook, Twitter, and Google Might Affect the Church" links over to Mark Brown's thoughts, How the Digital Revolution Might Affect the Church.

... we need to recognize the utter importance of powerful, transformational preaching. And we need to create systems by which those with such preaching ability and gifting can be widely available. Why restrict a gifted preacher to one community? Lifechurch.tv lead the way in making resources, including preaching, available to more than those who turn up in person for the service.

We need to move from appointing leaders based on them completing the right degree to giving more weight to discerning their ability to complete the leadership task.

We need to create the opportunity for people to 'be at church' or part of a community at any moment in the day/week. Setting a special time on Sunday morning is artificial and limiting.

Mark also explores other issues affected by the digital revolution, namely, church governance, church leadership, and the institutional church as we know it. Read the full article.

From my vantage point, I'm guessing that changes to how we live out our faith as the church is only beginning. More changes are yet to come. Technology is only a part of what's ushering in the change. (Aside: there are at least 27 churches with Internet campuses offering church online) What do you think?

// DJ Chuang, Director at Leadership Network

Comments

[Greg Atkinson]

I spent the weekend at LifeChurch.tv and got to see this up-close and personal - it truly is an amazing thing. When we were in the Church Online office and the online experience was going on there were 44 countries online at the same time.