“Unprecedented.” That’s the word that many have used to describe the challenges that Churches are facing so far in 2020. It is worth noting that these challenges are peculiarly “unprecedented” for American Churches. At the center of the whole issue is that most American Churches are suspending corporate worship in compliance with the guidance, and in some cases the mandate, of governing authorities. The challenges include how to effectively minister to those in need, disseminate the teaching and preaching ministry of the church, and foster community among the members when they are not physically together.
The challenge of separation, the inability to be physically together, really lies at the core of this “unprecedented” time for American Churches. Perhaps we have taken our right to gather for worship for granted. The challenge of separation is not unusual for the Church throughout the world, and throughout history. Assembling for corporate worship has ever been a dangerous, indeed deadly, commitment for Christians. This persecution continues to the present day. Being unable to corporately worship in peace and safety is not an “unprecedented” challenge for the Christians of Libya, Somalia, Iran, or North Korea. This is not the first time that Churches have had to suspend corporate worship in light of imminent pandemic. History reminds us of entire European cities, along with their churches, abandoned in the shadow of the Black Death. Even American churches closed their doors in compliance with governing authorities during the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918.
2020 has indeed brought the challenge of separation to American Churches. Peculiarly, that challenge has been parlayed into something different:
The opportunity of separation.
The opportunity of separation is essentially a question: Can the use of technology to facilitate church media, the gathering together of people in small groups in the home, and even the private and family observance of the sacraments replace physical corporate worship?
What Do We Need This Building For, Anyway?
Churches are not known for being purveyors of change. In American culture, the last two decades have seen rapid changes, spurred on by the advancement of technology, in every aspect of life. In spite of our high school math teachers’ insistence to the contrary, we do have a calculator everywhere we go. It is also useful for phone calls, emails, entire Office suites, video conferencing, internet access, and GPS services. It is a camera and an audio and visual recorder. It can connect us to anyone, virtually anywhere in the world, at any given moment. The corporate grind of 9-5 is slowly giving way to the remote worker. Travel by air, land, and sea is cleaner and more efficient than ever before. Business executives from different continents often meet face-to-face by video conferencing. “Snail mail” is a term of derision in the age of type and send. Even the classic “office meeting” is maligned, that meeting should have been an email! It is not unusual to see the CEO of a company with the GDP of a small country giving a speech in jeans and a polo shirt.
Yet for every high-rise office building with gleaming architecture there is a small brick-and-mortar church building with the carpet that the committee chose, 51-49, twenty-five years earlier. For every $400 ergonomics-plus office chair in existence there is still an oak pew with .000001 inches of padded cloth secured to the floor of a sanctuary. For every jeans-and-polo CEO, there is still a suit-tie-pocket square Senior Pastor. The majority of Churches are just entering the age of email of social media presence. I hope this all reads as lightheartedly as I intend for it to. I am the pastor of a Church with wooden pews and no website, and I love it!
Now the technological gap between the world and the Church is rapidly closing. The challenge of separation has done more to usher the American Church toward the use of technology than any other catalyst in my lifetime. Churches are using Facebook, Zoom, Go To Meeting, and a variety of other platforms to host corporate worship services and small group meetings. Church websites are populating with community forums and online financial giving options. I personally had a video conference with an administrator and the deacons of a rural Arkansas church just this week at their insistence. Times are changing.
As the technological changes advance in society, there is an inevitable change of cultural dynamic that takes place as well. Many of us have coworkers and friends who we have never even met. We only know them as a picture on Facebook or as the name in an email signature. Many of us will never meet the persons who grow the food we eat. Amazingly, a rapidly growing number of us are diagnosed and treated by physicians and nurses whose Stethoscopes have never touched our chests. Technology has made our networks bigger, our food more available, and our medicine more accessible. These are good advancements. They are also purely pragmatic and do little to facilitate real community and relationships. An executive of a global company may have 5,000 associates in his or her contact list. Does he or she know the name of any of their spouses or kids?
The American culture has largely begun to ask the question, “What do we need this building for, anyway?” The pragmatically-driven advancements in society have made that question both possible and legitimate. Businesses of all sorts can effectively operate even though the associates of that business are spread across the globe. Agriculturalists can thrive even though their consumers live on the other side of oceans. There are people accumulating massive wealth while drinking Mountain Dew on the couch in their home, selling products they do not manufacture, store, ship, or even see. The challenge of separation has turned into the opportunity of separation- we don’t see national or global commerce (distance) as an enemy, but as a friend.
The necessity of using technology to make church ministries available to those who cannot be physically present together has brought this question to the doors of the Church. If we can live stream our services online, get small groups together in homes, even instruct them in how to pour their own grape juice and stack their own crackers for communion, then “what do we need this [Church] building for, anyway?”
The Challenge of Separation Becomes the Opportunity of Separation
In light of the present situation, there is a growing sentiment that this technology-driven church at a distance model is not a challenge, but an opportunity. The felt needs of the people can be met from the comfort of their home. The preaching is on-demand, the small group materials are packaged and mailed out, and communion is available right there at the coffee table! Pragmatically, it pushes all the right buttons. Why take on the unnecessary effort and expense of being physically together, when it’s now clear that all the benefits can be had while staying apart? The man-centered Ecclesiology of the Postmodern Evangelical Church is betrayed by these attitudes.
At this point, it is important to assert a couple of clarifications:
- The use of modern technology is a great blessing that the Church should use to its fullest reasonable extent. By the gracious provision of a sovereign God, pastors and elders are still able to expound God’s Word to their people even when they cannot be physically together. We should rejoice that the many faithful and skilled expositors (yes, there are still many!) in this country are reaching audiences that they would likely not reach under normal circumstances.
- The growing sentiment that Churches can effectively minister without a physical campus or gathering is a result of poor theology. The idea that the Church may function biblically and effectively, though it does not gather physically, is a result of theological error. If the purpose of the Church is thought to be meeting felt needs, then the online model is perfectly acceptable. If the goal of worship is focused on the needs of the worshiper and the goal of preaching is to encourage people to feel better about themselves and coach them into better living, then there truly is no need to be together. We live in the age of emergent, seeker-friendly, and affinity churches. The purposes of glorifying God, edifying the Saints, contending for divine truth, and pursuing personal and corporate holiness are lost in the anthropocentric programs of churches that genuinely have no reason to physically assemble.
The Assembly
Back to the question posed above, “Can the use of technology, small groups in the home, and private and family observance of the sacraments replace physical corporate worship?” Well, it depends. If the Church exists only to meet felt needs then the answer is “yes.” However, if the Church exists to glorify God, edify the Saints, contend for divine truth, and promote personal and corporate holiness, then the answer is an emphatic “no, it cannot.”
The idea of a separated church, divided up into home groups and online services only, is a modern invention. God’s own design for the Church is a physical congregation of His people. In the Old Testament, this was called the קָהָל, which means the congregation or assembly. It is often used to describe the people of Israel gathered together for worship or some other purpose (cf. Num. 14:5; Deut. 31:30; Josh. 8:35; 1Ki 8:14; 1Ch. 13:2; Ezra 10:1; Ps. 22:22; Prov. 5:14). The most common term that the Greek translators of the Septuagint used to translate קָהָל was ἐκκλησία. An ἐκκλησία sometimes referenced an assembly in a general sense or gathered for political purposes (Acts 19:32, 39), but became the terminology that the New Testament writers used to identify the church (1 Cor. 11:18; 14:4). In the introductions to his epistles to Corinth, Galatia, and Thessalonica, Paul called those physical and visible congregations by the name ἐκκλησἰα. Likewise, John uses this term to identify the physical and visible churches to whom he wrote in 3rd John and Revelation chapters 2 and 3. While the Hebrew and Greek terms are sometimes used to identify the people of God in all ages (the universal Church), there is a clear, repeated pattern of God’s people congregating together to read the Scriptures, hear the Word of God preached, observe the sacraments, and to edify one another- all to the glory of God. There is no pattern of intentional separateness of God’s people in the Scriptures.
Some technical material behind us, think of it from this perspective: to discredit congregational worship is unthinkable from reading the Scriptures. The recipients of the New Testament letters were local, physical congregations. In fact, it is the analogy of a physical body that the New Testament uses to describe the Church (Rom. 12:3-8). The young Church in Acts “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). Paul reprimanded the Corinthian Church for the errors that they committed when they came together (1 Cor. 11:18, 20;). Among the duties of elders given to Timothy are preaching (2 Tim. 4:2) and the public reading of the Scriptures to the congregation (1 Tim. 4:13). The author of Hebrews admonished his Christian readers, “let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Heb 10:24-25).
God is glorified when His people gather together- this is by His design. The body of Christ, individual Christians, are edified and grow in holiness when they use their gifts in the context of the covenant community of the local church for the benefit of one another. The public reading and preaching of the Scriptures are to be carried out in the context of the local congregation. Observance of the Lord’s Supper, a reminder of our spiritual union to Christ and physical union to one another, is to be done in the local Church. In fact, it is meaningless apart from the assembled body of Christ.
Fellowship outside of corporate worship is vital to the spiritual health and growth of the local church. We should be together, read together, and pray together at every opportunity. Technology has enabled our congregations to broaden their reach in ways that our forefathers in the faith couldn’t have imagined. But our home groups and our technological savviness will never supplant God’s design for the worship and spiritual life of His people- the local church.
May our separation always leave us longing to be together again.
Soli Deo Gloria,
Preston B. Kelso
Preston Kelso 