17th January 2025
As I write, we are preparing to drive up the M5 and M6 to the Lake District for the thanksgiving service for a very good friend, Mike. We have been friends for 57 years. It does not feel right to tell his wife, Liz, that we will just watch the live-stream on Zoom. We need to be there with her and her family (of course if snow was forecast, we would have to watch from home!).
This has made me think harder about “Cyber-church”. A streamed service is clearly a blessing for those who cannot get to a church. Watching a streamed service where you can see people and a building and where you still belong in some sense feels good.
However, a Baptist church we know in Melbourne (Australia) has never gone back to a service in their building since Covid. It has continued with worship wholly on line and is now about to sell its building. I have not followed its worship on line even though I found its eccentric form of liturgy helpful when I attended in person so cannot comment on that. (This is partly because it is at 5 a.m. our time!)
But I wonder, is it a church if you never meet in person and anyone new only knows you as a head and shoulders on Zoom and perhaps in a ‘breakout’ conversation after the worship service? Is it a church if you offer no joint service to a local community, even if only use of a building? And how do you offer pastoral support to each other and to newcomers?
What do you think?
Margaret Clements