“Online church is sick”

A little while back, I mused about whether my two reformed heroes, John Piper and Mark Driscoll, considered the Web church blasphemy.

Mark Driscoll responded in the last 8 or 10 minutes of his Advance ‘09 talk on What is the Church? recapping his arguments (direct link) in Vintage Church.

Now it’s John Piper’s turn to weigh in, and he doesn’t mince words. Here’s the full transcript of the question, “what are your thoughts on worshiping and being part of Christ’s body through an online church?” sent in to “Ask Pastor John.”

“If the question means, “as your only experience of worship,” it seems sick. We are created in bodies, not just in minds. And there is something docetic about this. That may not mean anything to a lot of people. Docetism was an early heresy that said that the body is not very important, and that life in the flesh and the created world is not very important, and that Jesus Christ only seemed to have a body. And usually material is evil.

God made us with bodies. He made us to give holy kisses to one another—embraces, handshakes, eyeball-to-eyeball conversation. He made husband and wife not to have imaginary video sex through Skype. He made them to go to bed together in the same bed. He made them to raise children in the same house, with hands-on hugs and spanks on the bottom and love. And he made churches to get together to hear each other sing, and to look at each other and talk to teach other, and minister to each other and help each other die well.

So to dispense with the entire bodily dimension of togetherness in order to substitute a video dimension of togetherness—like this right now—would, I think, be spiritually defective, would be contrary to Christ’s understanding of the church, and would be hurtful to the soul.

There are mysteries here in human relationships that we can’t quantify. And I don’t think that they can be replaced by electronic symbols.”

I think this critique, like Pastor Mark’s, takes the Web church too literally. The NewSpring Web Campus and other churches are actively encouraging relationships in the real world to complete the web campus experience.

But he also is clear that communal worship must be physical and is not sufficient if it is only a sense of communal gathering, as would happen in a chatroom.

What’s your take?

Filed under: community, web campus , community, theology

Why hold web church to a higher standard than other churches?

By now, you probably know that I’m pretty serious about exploring whether the church can be the church online.

I feel like I’m called to that purpose, and I feel like we need to be brave enough to try things that we aren’t entirely comfortable with in order to “by testing discern what is the will of God.” I have plans to take Mark Driscoll’s critique of the Web Church and offer my view of whether his theological points are sufficient to disqualify the web church at this point in its maturity.

I don’t want to be an uncritical apologist for the Web Church. There are many aspects of the Web Church that I’ve got personal reservations about, and many others that I think need to be tested before we can claim that it can fit within Biblical orthodoxy.

But what does bother me is that so often the critiques are coming from the point of view that the web church is a church expression that is incomplete, artificial (p.14 of link) or limited.

To which my response is: When has any church at any time not struggled with those things in one form or another?

Overall, it just seems like the church — even the early church! — was and is always and gloriously in the process of reaching toward the full expression of God’s grace and glory in the world — and failing backwards and forwards.

Why should the web church be held to a higher standard?

Filed under: web campus , theology, web campus

Can churches deny human choice?

A lot of the critical and necessary debate on this blog comes around one way or the other to: How does the church handle the rising tide of consumerism in its expression?

It’s not an accident: The web has empowered the individual like no other time in history, and the act of accomplishing ministry in this context is bound to flirt, sometimes dangerously, with abetting the self-seeking, vain, prideful human heart without God, rather than calling it to repentence in light of the manifest glories of God.

It seems to me that man has always seen himself at the center of all things. This is not new. What is new is the extent to which man can now do it in almost all phases of life. And the remedy for this heart sickness is and always will be the cross of Jesus.

So here’s my question: When God calls you to salvation, do you really have a choice to “opt out” of the body of Christ? Is it not one of the most magnificent promises of scripture that it’s not possible?

Only “Christians” with unregenerate hearts go shopping for God “experiences,” rather than surrender to him.

Only “Christians” with no understanding of Lordship believe that God is a vending machine of blessings.

Only “Christians” who have never heard the truth will allow themselves to be swayed by every wind of doctrine.

Is it not the gospel, the good news, the freedom from captivity, that human agency, human choice, for the regenerated heart, is always for good?

Our hyper-consumerist society is still relatively young, probably 100 years old at best. And for the church, for thousands of years a local phenomenon, our history with it is even shorter. Perhaps 50, if that. And i think that, if anything, there is a reckoning coming for the church as it wrestles with this, which probably explains some of my passion for the Web Church: It accelerates the urgency of figuring this out.

I submit that the battle is not between consumerism and whatever some Christians think can control it — authority structures, whatever. The battle is to get anointed, gospel-saturated teaching that places the supremacy of Christ above all things into earshot of as many dead hearts as possible so they can be convicted and awakened to life in Christ.

We need to make sure that people choose the church rather than Oprah, Dr. Phil, Tom Cruise and every other self-help guru who is leading people dancing and singing straight to the gates of hell.

Only then will they know difference between a true and false gospel.

Only then will they know the difference between a life that glorifies self and a life that serves God

Only then will they know that Jesus’ call to total surrender can not be resisted except with tears.

And only then will the Holy Spirit magnificently insist that the appetite for seeing, savoring and treasuring the joy of Christ be fed insatiably.

I ask again: Where does the path lead for Christ-centered churches who work in this “crooked and twisted generation” without an understanding of choice?

Filed under: discipleship, evangelism, ruminations, web campus , culture, discipleship, evangelism, theology, web campus

A Web campus: More than a podcast with bells and whistles

Web Campuses or Internet Campuses or whatever you want to call them are all the rage.

And as the Web Campus pastor for NewSpring Church, I’m blessed to have a small part in leading the Big C church to rightly embrace the web for church, broadly defined, as an environment for worship, a vehicle for community and discipleship, and a medium for evangelism.

I take what I do seriously enough that I’m always sharpening my theological understanding of what we’re trying to do through the web campus. So, inspired by this page on Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church Internet Campus, i thought I’d share here my internal vision statement for the web campus that has been in place since before we launched.

It’s aimed at getting my ministry team and volunteers on the same page. It’s a work in progress. It’s not proof-texted. It’s not officially endorsed by my church leadership. But it is I think a healthy approach that recognizes a web campus as something far more than a podcast with bells on.

Come on. You know you want to help critique it.

Our mission is to make Jesus famous one person at a time, helping people worship God, grow in faith and live in Christ-centered community online.

We believe the web campus can follow the model of a Biblical church. It provides a venue for worship of God, Biblical teaching, and opportunity for community, discipleship and evangelism.

For the lost, it can be a very powerful tool in welcoming spiritual seekers to hear the word of truth in a setting that may not be as intimidating as physically attending a church.

For those Christians who are not fully committed to a local church, it can be a more open and inviting path to involvement in a local body of serving, discipling, evangelizing believers who are passionate about Jesus and obedient to his word.

We believe that online attenders can and should participate fully in the life of NewSpring Church, which considers itself one church in many locations.

As with every NewSpring campus, our online attenders will be strongly encouraged to get baptized by immersion after a decision for Christ, give, serve each other and the church in online and offline venues and proclaim the good news as the Lord gifts them and leads them. Periodically, we also will celebrate communion together, rightly instructed by a pastor, with online attenders gathering and taking their own elements. (See our five purposes below)

Attendence of the Web Campus should never be viewed as a legitimate way to “go to church” while avoiding the challenges or the commitments involved in faithful participation of a local church body. We do, however, believe that full, consistent, surrendered worship among a body of believers on the web campus is to be preferred to infrequent attendance of a local church and membership of it in name only for whatever reason.

We believe that online social and communication tools can be used to ensure that we are “meeting together” in worship and in Christ-exalting relationship with believers as well as serving as a witness to God corporately. But as the body of Christ, each with a role in discipling, serving and evangelizing within “communities of grace,” our success can only come through deep investment in individual lives and communities that must include some element of offline, bodily interaction.

Although we donʼt believe that physical presence is the only way we can fulfill our role in the body of Christ, we do want to strongly encourage people to gather physically wherever possible, such as by viewing the web campus in physical groups.

Overall, the web campus is more than just a podcast with a chat room. In fact, we recognize that some podcasters may be using our media to create a personal church experience that risks isolating them and tends toward a false understanding of the Christian life as private and solitary, rather than public and communal. The web campus offers a chance to lead podcasters toward a more complete experience and participation in church.

Our theological conviction is to offer attenders a 360-degree church experience: communal worship experience realized through our chat room or in physical gatherings, pastoral guidance from me and other NewSpring pastors, and abundant opportunities to take “next steps” in their walk with Jesus. I think you’ll agree that taken as a whole, the web campus can serve as someone’s church home, should they need it.

We want out attenders to:

• Worship God through time, talent, treasure and prayer.
• Grow Biblical relationships that spur greater communion and connection with God, the church and each other.
• Grow spiritually through Bible reading and study and other resources to develop their spiritual understanding, gifts and leadership abilities.
• Serve their church and community by meeting needs in ministry and missions
• Share their faith with unchurched people by sharing testimony and inviting people to worship services online or offline.

Filed under: ruminations, web campus , community, community management, discipleship, evangelism, theology, web campus rollout

Whatever happened to the sacred?

My ministry is the web church, so it’s not surprising that my heart skips a beat when I come across critiques of what God laid on my heart to do.

I actually welcome criticism, partly because I love God too much to be outside his will, and also because I want to be humble about what I think I know about the majestic God that I worship with my life.

In one such critique below, there was one point (or maybe I’m misunderstanding?) that made me pause: Can we truly experience the sacred online?

[the cyber-church] … risks the danger that in the electronically mediated virtual world the experience of the holy will become visual and secularized. It also faces the danger that the Word of God pervading the depth of the soul will be changed into the on-screen messages of the electronically reduced multimedia.”

– Yuang Han Kim (HT: Tall Skinny Kiwi)

The concept of reverence seems stuffy and unfashionable. I get that. And I know all the theoretical and theological stuff about God being part of your everyday life, God being your friend.

The problem for me is that there are just too many words like “awe” and “fear” and “glory” and their synonyms in the scriptures to not believe that the question of sacredness is valid.

Growing up Greek Orthodox, I was clueless about a lot of things, including Jesus, but I definitely knew the moment that I stepped foot inside the church that I was supposed to feel oh-so-small and unworthy in the presence of a Holy, Holy, Holy God.

In megachurches like NewSpring, the lights, the music and the sheer size of the congregation help build that sense, I think. But that doesn’t really transfer on the web.

Of course, God being God, there are times when the move of the Holy Spirit is dramatic and unmistakable no matter what environment we’re in.

Such as when RoseAngela breaks down while singing the old hymn “Softly and Tenderly”.

Or when evangelist Clayton King decides to make an invitation before a single word is preached and sees hundreds declare Jesus as Lord and Savior. (Watch at least part of the 20-minute portion of this service, beginning at 21:30)

What do you think?

Filed under: ruminations , ruminations, theology, web campus

Dear John: Is the Web church blasphemy?

It’s almost too fashionable now to say you are a fan of the ministries of John Piper and Mark Driscoll, the twin pillars of so-called and much-debated New Calvinism.

But, aside from my extraordinary (and also theologically sophisticated) pastor, Perry Noble, those pastor-theologians have provided much of the spiritual solid foodsince I came to Christ in 2003.

One of the things I admire about most of them is that they convincingly show theology isn’t just an academic matter but essential to every believer for their joy in Christ. And they shepherd their churches with the “Big C” church at the forefront of everything they do.

(They also have two of the most progressive online, multimedia ministries in the world. The Desiring God web site is practically the gold standard for any ministry wanting to make its teaching accessible to the masses in practically every environment.)

In Vintage Church, Pastor Mark has come out unequivocally against the concept of the Web Church. His argument boiled down to his belief that you can’t have “real community” online and that the sacraments of Communion and Baptism cannot be rightly administered.

I’m hoping Pastor John will weigh in soon in response to my twitter question for his “Ask Pastor John” series:

#apj is there a sound theological basis to believe you can worship and be part of Christ’s body in community through an online church?

What other Web church questions would you ask?

Filed under: web campus , theology, Twitter, web campus

Notes and reflections on my Unleash soapbox

I’m new to speaking gigs. Kinda funny really, given that I’ve always liked to be outspoken.

It was a huge privilege to have the attention of about 50 to 100 folks for 5 minutes during Unleash, NewSpring’s balling church conference, on the subject of “How to Build Community.”

It was fun to have a box to stand on in the middle of the Anderson Campus courtyard with a bullhorn in my hands. And nerve wracking too.

Here are my notes, with a few more lines of explanation that I never got to give to my live audience. You can compare that with the video of the soapbox and tell me if it translated. (And you can be honest with me. Jesus would want that.)

My Challenge to the church: Build Community!
Everyone else is doing it
Jesus wants it (Matt. 5:14)
People crave it

What is community?
It isn’t affiliation. It is participation (1 Cor. 12) Community as a “goodness engine”

Three things you need for community (and one if you want to call it a success.)
1. Identity/Culture
Tell stories, encourage conversations; establish membership value to self, others
2. Interdependency
Create transparency about member resources; offer mechanism to exchange social value (Acts. 2/4)
3. Purposefulness
Leverage resources through collaboration, crowdsourcing (Ex. 25); embrace innovation
4. Legacy
Transfer value to succeeding generations; across different social spheres. (Matt 28)

For Church to be the hope of the world:
Message and people=open, attractive
Praxis=dynamic, integrative
Results=duplicatable

My take-away message in three paragraphs:

1. We have the will of God, the power of the Holy Spirit, the best news anyone could ever receive and all the social technology imaginable to build powerful community everywhere that creates disciples of Jesus. So let’s do it!

2. It happens by the massive, web-enabled network effects of gathering the people of God and sharing their knowledge, resources and time with the world to create attractive, unimaginable, unbelievable social value. We can’t let the church sit on the sidelines while the world manufactures fake community for distraction, entertainment or financial gain.

3. The church cannot be afraid to harness the tools in its own way for its own people and its own purpose because it worries that we will create a subculture. Christians have always been a subculture. The difference is whether that subculture hides from the world or aggressively pursues the transformation of the culture. Doing community well will always add to our number daily from the lost, the oppressed and the dispossessed in our culture.

Do I hear an amen?

Filed under: ruminations , community, culture, theology

What in the world are we trying to do?

Thought you’d ask.

View our mini-manifesto for the NewSpring Web Campus, which you can typically find behind the “New Here” button in the navigation behind the chat window on the Web Campus page. (Yeah. I hear you. That’s why I’m referring to it here.)

I’m sure it’s missing a lot of nuance. And I’m not sure if it’s the most eloquent explanation I could have made, but it was where my heart was at the time of launch.

What do you think? What’s missing from this vision-casting video for our Web campus?

Filed under: web campus , theology, web campus

Rise of social media means the church is running out of excuses

My friend, John Saddington, published a Q&A with me last Friday where i gave my view of the greatest impact technology would have on the church.

In case you missed it, here it is:

Time Bandits or Favorite Websites?

Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader. ESV Study Bible online=hours of fun. Ditto: Hulu, Last.fm.

Whatcha Working On?

Building a community of radical believers on the NewSpring Web Campus (newspring.cc/webcampus). Even though we were very pleased with the launch of the first phase of the physical campus, the harder work is head. Working with the rest of our communications team, I’m trying to experiment with the best methods to create a true Biblical community that is serving and discipling and evangelizing one another.

How do you see Web Technology impacting The Kingdom?

I’m a techno-evangelist, but a pragmatic one. Technology is only ever a tool, and as far as I can tell, technology always creates as many problems as it solves. I guess that’s what it means to live in a fallen world.

I believe strongly in social media as a tool for kingdom building, but only in so far as it removes so many of our excuses for our weak, ineffective witness, our partial, fragile sense of community and our lazy discipleship.

I am amazed at the amount of talent, vision and passion in the modern church movement. We’ve done a great work in stripping away the crust of dead traditions and unhelpful legalisms that had covered up our vision of Christ, but now that we have gotten to the core of the faith — loving Jesus, loving others — our fruit better prove it.

The thing about our hyper-mediated world is that a huge amount that used to be hidden in the heart is now revealed by our technology. Every word we blurt out; everywhere we go, every work we do potentially is going to be lifestreamed … and people will be able to draw even harsher judgments about whether we are Christians in name only.

We have the power to evangelize the world; we have the tools for every Christian to be without excuse: People can hear about God’s wonderful deeds, they can devote themselves to sound teaching, they can share in fellowship and offer themselves as living sacrifices to the body of Christ.

If they don’t or won’t, the only explanation is that they don’t have the heart of worship. Their knowledge and understanding of God is too small. And that means that our churches or the “priesthood of all believers” that we belong to just isn’t lifting up Christ enough and or consistently so that he can draw us closer to him for our sanctification.

Filed under: community, discipleship, evangelism, ruminations, social media , community, discipleship, evangelism, social media, theology

The tears in church are just as real on the web

The NewSpring Web Campus launch was thrilling. You can read the official account at the Web Campus blog, including video.

But what blew me away was not the number of people that were gathered. Or the fact that people from all over the world worshipped with us.

It was that amid all the philosophical and theological debates about the Web church and whether web community is real and whether sacraments can be rightly administered, we forget that real people need us to make this work.

They are in real pain, they have real souls, they have real lives and real eternities.

Perry brought a tough, intense sermon today. He challenged people to totally forgive. He asked thousands in the auditorium on the Anderson Campus to write names on sheets of paper and to tear them in unison as they were set free from Satan’s grip.

Everyone heard that sound. It brought Perry to tears. And it brought the Web Campus to tears. It drove many people to seek help in our live prayer. And for one reason or another, these people were not in a local church on the ground in their neighborhood.

Sure, we could try and persuade them that physical attendance is the “right thing to do.” We could even take a crack at justifying why they should attend a local church.

Even if they are not being challenged and stretched spiritually.

Even if they are not in fellowship that encourages and strengthens them and that can hold them accountable.

Would we be successful? I doubt it.

But here’s the thing: They were at church. It was just online. And they need the church to stop arguing about whether they were really there and just figure out how we can be the church online for them; how we can help each other love God, love others and make disciples.

It’s time to stop talking about bit-rates, and web design, and the latest, shiniest new tools and to start talking about how we build genuine, Christ-centered community for the long haul.

The web has changed social arrangements forever. We cannot argue about that any longer.

In post-Christian Europe, local churches everywhere are being shut down and turned into luxury condos or bars. Physical, bricks-and-mortar church holds little to no meaning other than prejudice and anachronism for hundreds of millions of people.

We would be sinning against Christ and his sacrifice on the cross to turn our backs on them.

I plan to charge the gates of hell with our Web Campus. Who’s with me?

Filed under: community, discipleship, evangelism, ruminations, social media, web campus , community, culture, discipleship, evangelism, ruminations, social action, theology, web campus, web campus rollout