So, you’re saying there are ways God can’t move?
The NewSpring Web Campus got some ink over Easter from an Upstate newspaper, the Greenville News.
It was a well done piece letting people know about the opportunity we offered to worship from home that included some testimonials from web campus attenders.
In the interests of balance, the reporter included a critic.
“You can’t sit next to another human being, look them in the eye and tell them you love them,” Helen Turnage, a 49-year-old bank teller from Easley, said in a comment on Facebook about the Web church. “You can’t share their deepest pain or help carry their burden. You can’t touch them.”
Here was my response:
“To say that I wasn’t somehow connecting with them through the power of God and through the Holy Spirit is actually kind of saying God can’t move except physically,” he said, noting that the Apostle Paul used letters to convey deep spiritual messages to church members in the first century.
What would you have said?
Meditations (Web)Church 
I appreciated the point that God is bigger than our expectations. As I mentioned on Tony’s blog, I appreciate utilizing internet resources. My concern is that community isn’t an add-on, and that church without it *is* missing something if left without forever. Paul and the desert fathers did use letters and spent time alone. They also spent time in community.
If the online services are expressed as an addition to the community of church, or as a temporary substitution, or as an introduction, I’m for it. If they are understood to be an alternative to being physically present at church as a standard, I can’t agree.
As another perspective: how well could someone do at parenting if they were *only* allowed phone calls? I’m not talking about a year (ex: service members). We’re talking about only phone calls, ever. It is only to point out that love does have a physical component that needs feeding.
Kevin Cassidy
April 17, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Kevin: A very cogent response. I’m with you completely: Supplement, introduction, but never substitution. I guess my assumption is that even those of us comfortable and skilled in online community see it as part of a community solution, not the whole answer.
ipiphanist
April 18, 2009 at 9:06 am