#11) Online Churches....?

As of late, I have been reading more into the idea of an online church and the idea of having an online Christian community... if there is such a thing.

Online Church

This website has "over 365 billion possibilities...what will God send you." The site will randomly send you a sermon to listen to, as well as you having the ability invite-a-friend, tithe, send prayer requests, receive a special salvation message, and many other things.

With sites like this one, all I feel like we are doing, is sending people away from Christianity and the understanding of what it means to be a Christian and a faithful follower of Jesus Christ. In my opinion, the only positive thing that can come out of an online "community" is itself a place where people can go online and discuss issues when they are not able to meet in person. I would then consider that a community but only if that community has some person-to-person contact within a period of time.

I look at this with a perspective of Jacques Ellul. Ellul talks about how he values the spoken word over the written one. The online church, otherwise seen as the image, "can be accurate or inaccurate but not true or false. Only words can be true or false. ...We run into trouble when we confuse image with truth." He goes on to talk about how the word instructs us about the image.

I just feel that in situations like this, where we are saying that it is okay to only attend an online church and skip the whole meaning of community, then we are sending incorrect messages as Christians. Community needs to be understood as a gathering where two or more people meet in person to discuss with one another. And as a church, as a body of Christ, we need to draw people into the church so that they can be warmly welcomed into a community of believers.

Ellul asks us a couple of question:
1. As media becomes more image oriented will it separate us further from truth, if so, what are the implications?

2. What challenges does this present to us as Christians if seeing is believing becomes the norm?

I think this very important to think about to ourselves with media and the online church and what all the implications and challenges might be... especially as new communication technologies continue to become more advanced. Just something to think about...