Something that my father-in-law said this morning really struck me. We were talking about my work helping to set up an online networking website to link all the marketplace Christian fellowship groups that have been around for decades, but never really collaborated for synergy. He was pointing out the occasional excuse people give for not coming to these lunchtime face-to-face meetings: “these days we have the Internet. We can communicate by e-mail, and there are lots of great sermons that help me grow spiritually, so I can save the time travelling to the meeting place.” That really is a compelling case for the time-crunched executive.
But have we thought about what we lose in the process? The purpose of fellowship groups is not just to share information and get edified by the meeting. The people of God do not gather weekly to receive the best sermons and glorious music. They go to church not to speak and hear only encouragement and praise. The Church is the gathering of the imperfect, broken pieces of Christ’s body, so that when they come together with their hurts and problems, the grace of God can be manifest as they minister to one another.
Last December, my brother and sister-in-law left for a year of studies at a college in San Francisco. They brought their one-year-old Caleb with them, and his grandparents have been lamenting the loss of contact with their beloved grandson. Thankfully, there’s Skype, which even my non-tech-savvy in-laws learned to use so they could see their family on video. Every other day there would be a Skype conversation, especially over the recent Chines New Year holidays.
On Skype, we see the cute and adorable Caleb showing us he’s learned to say the alphabet. We want to just see him laugh and tell him we miss him, and pine for his presence. And then we turn off the connection happy and pleased, albeit with our hearts aching to have him back in Singapore again.
But something’s missing, my Father-in-law observed. It’s not real. When we got to spend time with Caleb regularly, we have to deal with his whole person. Young as he is, he’s already learned how to be rebellious and can get really cranky sometimes. Of course he’s obedient and sweet most of the time. But outside of Skype, Grandpa will occasionally need to discipline and scold Caleb. He has to deal with his tantrums and rebelliousness. The point is, we hardly ever need to see any of this through the so-called virtual community.
I know that even with face-to-face weekly church meetings you can keep your brokenness hidden from others well enough. But with the Internet we can so much more easily turn off conversations, and edit what we want to say. That makes it much more tempting to avoid dealing with the messy parts of doing life together. We consume, and publish, only the best teaching, the best music, the best blogs.
The church is really the body of Christ. When we are alone, we are broken pieces, and these broken parts form a whole only when they come together to give and take. Only a community that loves and receives love from each other can truly reflect Christ.
Until the virtual communities that are enabled by the Internet foster such giving and receiving, they will at best be a shadow of the church that God intended. They can do a lot to enhance community, but stand on their own to completely replace our weekly face-to-face meetings? I don’t think that day will ever come. For how can the church, Christ incarnate, give real comfort for the needy world using only words and images?
