When I walk into services on Sunday morning, I’m usually about 30 minutes late. Our 6-month-old wakes up from his morning nap at 10, right when the first chords of a hymn begin to be played in our San Francisco church. My husband and I rush to get the baby dressed, fed and in the car. We drop him off at the nursery 20 minutes after all the other kids have settled in, kiss him goodbye, walk upstairs and find our seats just around the time the sermon is beginning.
In this season of life, it would be a lot easier not to go to church — and this isn’t true just for parents of babies. More and more churches these days are offering services on the internet: Life Church in Oklahoma City introduced an “internet campus” in 2006; in 2017, Connexus Church in Ontario, which had begun live-streaming its services the year before, saw its online attendance surpass the number of people who showed up on a Sunday morning. At Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., you can share prayers via a web forum before even having met another person. And just last month, the celebrity pastor Judah Smith announced Churchome Global — essentially, church via app, with forums and the ability to pray for fellow congregants by pressing your thumbs onto icons while hearts float up the screen.
Not all online church is so flashy — many congregations simply stream their services for those who just can’t make it in. For many churchgoers, consuming church the way we consume the news is more convenient, and more in line with our lifestyles than the old-fashioned Sunday morning visit.
And yet, church calls. Going to church — sitting in a room with other people for an hour and a half on Sundays — is nonnegotiable for me, unless I’m out of town. At the same time some people find themselves at brunch with friends or catching up on Netflix in bed, I am in a padded, stackable chair at the Russian cultural center my church rents for our services, sitting under a disco ball and listening to a sermon about Jesus.
Live-streaming church services is nothing new, and churches have been making and selling recordings of their sermons ever since the advent of cassette tapes. The intention behind live-streaming services — to make church, and its attendant benefits of community, prayer and worship, available to everyone with a smartphone — is a good one. But it presumes that God is primarily present to us one on one, as individuals, rather than as a community of believers. This is not what the Bible says. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says that “where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” This passage suggests the necessity of being part of a community in which we approach God, rather than doing it alone.
In his letters to early Christian communities, the Apostle Paul describes the church as a body comprising different but equally necessary members. When the church at Corinth was bickering over the importance of different spiritual gifts, Paul wrote to remind them that “the body does not consist of one member but of many.” He writes, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’” Later, he says, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”
Religious affiliation in America is down, according to a 2015 Pew survey. Religious institutions more and more reflect an insular community, and Churchome Global is the best distillation of where American Christianity is headed — your living room, your phone, your television. No longer will you have to leave your house to interact with fellow worshipers. You can do it all from the comfort, and isolation, of your own home.
But this individual, isolated experience of church is the poorer one for those of us who are able to go. (Live-streaming services are of course important for the homebound.) In an era when everything from dates to grocery delivery can be scheduled and near instant, church attendance shouldn’t be one more thing to get from an app. We can be members of a body best when we are all together — we can mourn when we observe and wipe away tears, just as we can rejoice when we can share smiles and have face-to-face conversations. Studies show that regular attendance at religious services correlates with better sleep, lower blood pressure in older adults and a reduced risk of suicide. I doubt these same phenomena occur when online church is substituted for the real thing, because the truth is that community is good for us. We need one another.
Two Christmases ago, my husband and I were dealing with our second miscarriage in three months. It was a time that was fraught with anxiety and debilitating sickness. There were so many Sundays when streaming a church service would have been preferable to getting out of bed, and there were Sundays when I couldn’t get out of bed at all.
But most Sundays, we were there, in those stackable chairs. And when the anxiety and the nausea got really bad and I couldn’t work, the church came to me. Those same friends who had served me communion were now at my front door with a meal, or a book, or a few minutes to pray together. I continued to meet every Tuesday night with my Bible study group, women from the church who know everything about what the others are going through. They visited the hospital when, after yet another miscarriage, I gave birth to our son and he had to spend time in the neonatal intensive care unit. They sent flowers and meals when we got home.
As the holidays approach, I can already feel myself pulled in a dozen different directions. When will we buy the tree? What traditions should we institute for our new family of three? Have I gotten enough work done that I can take a few days off around Christmas? When can I pack for our visit to see family? Every moment seems full of things to do.
But instead of wanting to put church on TV in the background while I wrap presents, I find myself pulled toward those stackable chairs, the Advent hymns, the communion bread and cup handed to me with the reminder that they are the body and blood of Christ. I want to hear the children sing off-key during the Lessons and Carols service, smell the musty air in the Russian Center, eat too many doughnuts in the common area with the people who are the church to me.
This, then, is the beauty of the church: not that it is perfect or convenient or fits easily into my life but that without it, my life would be deficient. I could still believe in God without the church, could celebrate Christmas without it, or go once a year. But I don’t believe I would truly be a Christian without the real, in-person, Sunday morning church. Disco ball and all.
Laura Turner is the author of a forthcoming book about the cultural history of anxiety.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
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Home » Analysis & Comment » Opinion | Internet Church Isn’t Really Church
Opinion | Internet Church Isn’t Really Church
When I walk into services on Sunday morning, I’m usually about 30 minutes late. Our 6-month-old wakes up from his morning nap at 10, right when the first chords of a hymn begin to be played in our San Francisco church. My husband and I rush to get the baby dressed, fed and in the car. We drop him off at the nursery 20 minutes after all the other kids have settled in, kiss him goodbye, walk upstairs and find our seats just around the time the sermon is beginning.
In this season of life, it would be a lot easier not to go to church — and this isn’t true just for parents of babies. More and more churches these days are offering services on the internet: Life Church in Oklahoma City introduced an “internet campus” in 2006; in 2017, Connexus Church in Ontario, which had begun live-streaming its services the year before, saw its online attendance surpass the number of people who showed up on a Sunday morning. At Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., you can share prayers via a web forum before even having met another person. And just last month, the celebrity pastor Judah Smith announced Churchome Global — essentially, church via app, with forums and the ability to pray for fellow congregants by pressing your thumbs onto icons while hearts float up the screen.
Not all online church is so flashy — many congregations simply stream their services for those who just can’t make it in. For many churchgoers, consuming church the way we consume the news is more convenient, and more in line with our lifestyles than the old-fashioned Sunday morning visit.
And yet, church calls. Going to church — sitting in a room with other people for an hour and a half on Sundays — is nonnegotiable for me, unless I’m out of town. At the same time some people find themselves at brunch with friends or catching up on Netflix in bed, I am in a padded, stackable chair at the Russian cultural center my church rents for our services, sitting under a disco ball and listening to a sermon about Jesus.
Live-streaming church services is nothing new, and churches have been making and selling recordings of their sermons ever since the advent of cassette tapes. The intention behind live-streaming services — to make church, and its attendant benefits of community, prayer and worship, available to everyone with a smartphone — is a good one. But it presumes that God is primarily present to us one on one, as individuals, rather than as a community of believers. This is not what the Bible says. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says that “where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” This passage suggests the necessity of being part of a community in which we approach God, rather than doing it alone.
In his letters to early Christian communities, the Apostle Paul describes the church as a body comprising different but equally necessary members. When the church at Corinth was bickering over the importance of different spiritual gifts, Paul wrote to remind them that “the body does not consist of one member but of many.” He writes, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’” Later, he says, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”
Religious affiliation in America is down, according to a 2015 Pew survey. Religious institutions more and more reflect an insular community, and Churchome Global is the best distillation of where American Christianity is headed — your living room, your phone, your television. No longer will you have to leave your house to interact with fellow worshipers. You can do it all from the comfort, and isolation, of your own home.
But this individual, isolated experience of church is the poorer one for those of us who are able to go. (Live-streaming services are of course important for the homebound.) In an era when everything from dates to grocery delivery can be scheduled and near instant, church attendance shouldn’t be one more thing to get from an app. We can be members of a body best when we are all together — we can mourn when we observe and wipe away tears, just as we can rejoice when we can share smiles and have face-to-face conversations. Studies show that regular attendance at religious services correlates with better sleep, lower blood pressure in older adults and a reduced risk of suicide. I doubt these same phenomena occur when online church is substituted for the real thing, because the truth is that community is good for us. We need one another.
Two Christmases ago, my husband and I were dealing with our second miscarriage in three months. It was a time that was fraught with anxiety and debilitating sickness. There were so many Sundays when streaming a church service would have been preferable to getting out of bed, and there were Sundays when I couldn’t get out of bed at all.
But most Sundays, we were there, in those stackable chairs. And when the anxiety and the nausea got really bad and I couldn’t work, the church came to me. Those same friends who had served me communion were now at my front door with a meal, or a book, or a few minutes to pray together. I continued to meet every Tuesday night with my Bible study group, women from the church who know everything about what the others are going through. They visited the hospital when, after yet another miscarriage, I gave birth to our son and he had to spend time in the neonatal intensive care unit. They sent flowers and meals when we got home.
As the holidays approach, I can already feel myself pulled in a dozen different directions. When will we buy the tree? What traditions should we institute for our new family of three? Have I gotten enough work done that I can take a few days off around Christmas? When can I pack for our visit to see family? Every moment seems full of things to do.
But instead of wanting to put church on TV in the background while I wrap presents, I find myself pulled toward those stackable chairs, the Advent hymns, the communion bread and cup handed to me with the reminder that they are the body and blood of Christ. I want to hear the children sing off-key during the Lessons and Carols service, smell the musty air in the Russian Center, eat too many doughnuts in the common area with the people who are the church to me.
This, then, is the beauty of the church: not that it is perfect or convenient or fits easily into my life but that without it, my life would be deficient. I could still believe in God without the church, could celebrate Christmas without it, or go once a year. But I don’t believe I would truly be a Christian without the real, in-person, Sunday morning church. Disco ball and all.
Laura Turner is the author of a forthcoming book about the cultural history of anxiety.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
Source: Read Full Article